I am writing some e-books on free software. I am recommending TeX (of course) and Context instead of LaTeX. The vast majority of my readers will be using some flavor of MSWindows. Unfortunately there have been problems in synchronizing Context releases and Miktex releases, in re. hyphenation and fonts in general. I need to recommend a download package for readers who will be newcomers to the world of TeX. Which is the safest pointer? I see Miktex as a possibility but also the stripped versions of the TeX distribution maintained on the Context site. So how would you start an absolute newbie to e.g., Context and pdfetex? Where would you point them for their first download?
I think both MikTeX and Hans' minimal tree are good. The MikTeX installer might feel a bit more familiar to a newbie, but if you give them instructions on how to install the minimal tree, it shouldn't be anymore challenging than MikTeX. Also, I think it's easier to stay in sync with Hans' development of ConTeXt using the minimal windows distribution and updating via the texsync script. Although, using texsync would also entail installing Ruby and Cygwin (to get the Rsync program). I think the only unexpected thing I had to do to get the minimal windows tree working was to make the files in texmf-mswin\bin executable (the permissions were not right). Matt