[NTG-context] ConTeXt on MikTeX broken

[Mojca Miklavec]

On Tue, May 6, 2008 at 4:29 PM, George N. White III wrote:
> On Sat, May 3, 2008 at 7:00 AM, Mojca Miklavec
>  <mojca.miklavec.lists at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>  >  some time ago some MikTeX users have complained that ConTeXt doesn't
>  >  work on MikTeX. It seems to be a problem with MikTeX itself since this
>  >  workaround seems to solve the problem, at least temporary:
>  >     ruby "C:\Program Files\MiKTeX
>  >  2.7\scripts\context\ruby\texmfstart.rb" texexec
>
>  I'm not so quick to blame MiKTeX -- I suspect texmfstart.rb would need
>  to provide some path searching tailored to MiKTeX.   It seems to rely
>  on $0 with a tetex/texlive directory structure where SELFAUTOPARENT
>  can be used.

Christian has indeed replied that he uses the binary version of
texmfstart from CTAN (which is a bit older that the one on PRAGMA).
But I still don't understand what can go wrong "in the middle of
nothing", without any major changes. So there is either a problem in
MikTeX or in ConTeXt.

>  The only criticism of MiKTeX is that it is silly to distribute
>  a broken package, but then it is up to ConTeXt users to report breakage
>  and, ideally, supply fixes.

I completely agree. Except that I have no MikTeX any more. And I don't
have the slightest idea what could have caused the problem. I don't
see any serious changes in the texmfstart code that could break the
3-week-old version, while it has worked OK before.

Mea culpa. I should have forced Hans to fix it during BachoTeX ... :)
I will try to misuse some windows computer next week to see if I can
find any bugs (but it's difficult to test since one cannot simply
modify the ruby script as on other platforms).

>  >  (But apparently there are not many MikTeX users on the list anyway.
>  >  Else more would have complained.)
>
>  Don't complain, just switch to a platform/distro where ConTeXt works
>  and use mpm (since few others provide updates with the speed and
>  convenience of MiKTeX).
>
>  I think MiKTeX should remain focusing on the packages and binaries,
>  and rely on upstream to fix broken packages.

I agree. But I have thought that some change in MikTeX might have
occurred in the meantime.

Mojca