MiKTeX Blog

I have learned today that the BaKoMa fonts collection is not free. Consequence: the bakoma package has to be removed from the MiKTeX distribution. This will happen with the next update.

I have completed refactoring the MiKTeX core library. The library now compiles on Linux systems.

Next comes the package manager library. Challenges in this area are the following:

• Internet protocols (HTTP, FTP)
• cabinet files

Currently, the library uses Windows APIs to access the Internet and to read cabinet files. In order to make the library portable, I will refactor it to use

• libcurl - a multiprotocol transfer library (http://curl.haxx.se/libcurl/)
• libmspack - a library for Microsoft compression formats (http://www.kyz.uklinux.net/libmspack/)

The refactoring will take a month or two. Once completed, we have the command-line version (http://www.miktex.org/manual/mpm.html) of the MiKTeX package manager ready to be run on Linux, i.e., teTeX/TeXLive users will be able to download and install packages from the MiKTeX package repository.

I have uploaded the new MetaPost binaries to the SourceForge file server:

http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/miktex/metapost-0.901.zip?download

The MetaPost team has released MetaPost 0.901. This version seems to be ok, i.e., the tests now succeed. I will make available executables for MiKTeX 2.4 asap.

The MiKTeX package repository was unaccessible for the last 24 hours. It seems that I messed up the directory permissions with the last web site update. I have fixed this.

I have compiled MetaPost 0.9 for MiKTeX 2.4. Unfortunately, the test suite (mptrap) fails with the new executable. Maybe the suite is broken. I have reported the problem to one of the MetaPost developers.