[AUCTeX] Re: Precompiled AUCTeX 11.85 for Emacs on Windows

[Reiner Steib]

On Sat, Feb 23 2008, Ralf Angeli wrote:

> * Reiner Steib (2008-02-23) writes:
>> If the image DLLs won't be included in the final Emacs 22.2 for
>> Windows, it would be nice if your precompiled AUCTeX package would
>> include them or if you could provide an additional zip file containing
>> the DLLs.
>
> Well, you followed the discussion.  

Yes.

> I'd be facing the same challenges as Jason, i.e. constantly having
> to have an eye on security issues with the libraries and providing
> updates once some of those crop up.  

Did you compile the sources yourself or use the binaries from
www.zlib.net, gnuwin32.sourceforge.net, ...?

> And I'd rather spend my time on improving AUCTeX and RefTeX than on
> repackaging image libraries.

Sure.

> Jason mentioned that he made Emacs capable of utilizing image libraries
> installed with GTK+.  Like this you can install a bunch of image
> libraries with a single package.  (This will also give you additional
> stuff you'll likely never need unless you use the Gimp or some other
> GTK+ application on Windows.)  Jason installed the changes on the branch
> for Emacs 22.

Maybe I don't understand (please CMIIW): The use needs to download the
"Third Party Dependencies" zlib123-dll.zip, libpng-1.2.8-bin.zip,
tiff-3.8.2-1-bin.zip and jpeg-6b-4-bin.zip mentioned on
<http://www.gtk.org/download-windows.html>.

For Emacs, you need...
             59904 2005-07-20 11:48 zlib1.dll
            203264 2004-12-04 01:09 libpng13.dll
            127488 2005-05-15 14:08 jpeg62.dll
            376832 2006-03-28 10:50 libtiff3.dll

To take advantage of the new addpm feature, the user also need some of
the packages listed under the heading "GTK+" there.  I can't quite see
how this is very helpful for average Windows Emacs users:

Figure out the requires zip files; Unpack them; find the DLLs (some in
bin/, some in ./ after unpacking); copy them to the emacs/bin/
directory (or add them to %PATH%).

WRT security issues of those libs (looking at the time stamps!): At
least libpng-1.2.8 has had lots of issues since 2005.  How can we
recommend using these libs but not bundle those or newer (fixed?)
versions with Emacs?  (No offense indented against you or Jason!  I
just don't get the point yet.)

I also understand that updating the complete binary package of Emacs
or AUCTeX is inconvenient.  Maybe gathering the DLLs in
image-libs-YYYY-MM-DD.zip along with a document explaining the
security problems would be a compromise:

    bin/libpng13.dll
    bin/jpeg62.dll
    bin/libtiff3.dll
    bin/zlib1.dll
    bin/image-support-SECURITY.txt

Unpacking one more zip file is simple enough.

Bye, Reiner.
-- 
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      (o o)
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