Decision Guidance ⇒ Distribution supporting "standalone installation"?

[compme]

Hi,

Is there some LaTeX distribution that runs on Windows and can be put inside an app directory, so that such application will be able to use LaTeX without installing LaTeX in the usual system-wide configuration?

Thanks!

compme

[torbjorn t.]

Not sure if I understand exactly, but could MiKTeX Portable be what you're after?

[compme]

Not sure if I understand exactly, but could MiKTeX Portable be what you're after?

After reading that webpage, I believe it might work, although the goal of that distribution is not exactly the same (it's meant for portable media use, not for isolated use within an application), so I suspect I might need to modify the command script that enables that portable distro, or even don't execute any command script at all if the stuff it does isn't necessary for invoking it from my app. I'll investigate it. Thanks!

[josephwright]

TeX Live can be installed without needing to be the Administrator, if that is what you are after.

[compme]

TeX Live can be installed without needing to be the Administrator, if that is what you are after.

After taking a look at their website, it seems the installer modifies some OS configuration files. I don't want that anything outside the target directory is modified in the system.

In other words, I wish the guarantee that everything is put inside a directory, and nothing outside there is touched. I don't even want to modify the PATH system variable.

[compme]

Maybe it would have been a better idea to begin explaining that the purpose is to generate PDF files from an application that generates LaTeX math documents. The application is a simple standalone executable that generates LaTeX source code. I don't want to force the user to install a LaTeX distribution, nor to change any OS configuration in the user machine.

Of course I've been developing this application using a usual system-wide LaTeX distribution, but now I want an "standalone installation" when distributing the application.

[josephwright]

I think you'll have to take one of the distributions and adapt it to suit. Most applications that use TeX (Lyx most obviously, but others as well) tend to require a TeX distribution, I guess as this is the easiest way. The distributions themselves are built on the assumption that they need to be accessible via the path, as this is the common case. It shouldn't be too hard, I think, to modify a standard installation so that the path is unchanged. Of course, you'll need to decide exactly which parts of TeX you want, but I assume that you already have that data.