tex-common, languages, and finding language.dat

[Norbert Preining <preining@logic.at>]

Hi Frank, hi maintainers!

I have a question concerning finding language.dat.

I want to put a language.dat into TEXMFSYSVAR = /var/lib/texmf/
(into tex/generic/config) instead of linking it from /etc/texmf
into TEXMFMAIN.

Now the strange thing is that with
	$ kpsewhich language.dat
	/var/lib/texmf/tex/generic/config/language.dat
	$ TEXMFVAR=/var/lib/texmf TEXMFCONFIG=/usr/share/texmf kpsewhich language.dat
	/usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/config/language.dat

So fmtutil-sys cannot work as it takes the wrong language.dat.

Thomas answered me on this question:
---------------- 8< ---------------------
I think this can be explained if you look at your definition of the
order of TEXMF trees given in the TEXMF variable.

In teTeX's default setup, there is no overlap among the directories
mentioned in $TEXMF, i.e. all of TEXMFDIST, TEXMFHOME, TEXMFMAIN,
TEXMFCONFIG, TEXMFVAR, TEXMFSYSVAR and TEXMFSYSCONFIG are different
directories.

If you do something else, you should know what you are doing and also
know that I don't recommend to do this...
---------------- 8< ------------------------

Well this is now my question: (1) In fact I don't see why, and (2) can
we fix this in tex-common/texmf.cnf?

Thanks a lot for the consideration!

Best wishes

Norbert

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Dr. Norbert Preining <preining AT logic DOT at>             Università di Siena
sip:preining@at43.tuwien.ac.at                             +43 (0) 59966-690018
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