Bug#108703: Unwise TEXCONFIG setting in texmf.cnf

[Judicael Courant <Judicael.Courant@lri.fr>]

Package: tetex-bin
Version: 1.0.7+20001218-4
Severity: normal
File: /etc/texmf/texmf.cnf


SUMMARY:

The following facts

1) the config file for dvips is named config.ps

2) the default search path for TEXCONFIG (.;$TEXMF/dvips//) in
/etc/texmf/texmf.cnf includes the current directory.

make dvips fail when applied within a directory containing a
postscript file named config.ps

POSSIBLES SOLUTIONS:

1) Renaming the extension (.ps) of the config file of dvips to anything
specific to dvips

or

2) Removing "." from TEXCONFIG's setting.

DEMONSTRATION OF THE BUG:

Create two TeX files one of them being called config.tex

jcourant@ppc83:/tmp$ echo "Hello \end" > config.tex
jcourant@ppc83:/tmp$ cp config.tex hello.tex

TeX them:

jcourant@ppc83:/tmp$ tex config.tex
This is TeX, Version 3.14159 (Web2C 7.3.1)
(config.tex [1] )
Output written on config.dvi (1 page, 212 bytes).
Transcript written on config.log.
jcourant@ppc83:/tmp$ tex hello.tex
This is TeX, Version 3.14159 (Web2C 7.3.1)
(hello.tex [1] )
Output written on hello.dvi (1 page, 212 bytes).
Transcript written on hello.log.

Apply dvips to config.dvi

jcourant@ppc83:/tmp$ dvips config.dvi -o config.ps
This is dvips(k) 5.86d Copyright 1999 Radical Eye Software (www.radicaleye.com)
' TeX output 2001.08.14:1659' -> config.ps
<texc.pro>. [1] 

Applying dvips to hello.dvi will fail (exit 1, does not produce the
expected hello.ps but might produces other files, depending on the
content of config.ps).

jcourant@ppc83:/tmp$ dvips hello.dvi -o hello.ps
./config.ps:14:dvips: strange line
[lots of garbage deleted]


I wish the configuration file for dvips would have another name or,
maybe simpler, that the default TEXCONFIG does not mention the current
directory. This way, the casual user does not have to worry and to
read the whole dvips doc to discover that config.ps is the name of
dvips config file and the power user that wants to change dvips
configuration can still override the settings of texmf.cnf by an
environment variable (and she will immediately go to the section about
configuration files in the doc of dvips).

-- System Information
Debian Release: testing/unstable
Architecture: i386
Kernel: Linux ppc83 2.2.19 #3 Wed Jul 4 11:15:49 CEST 2001 i686
Locale: LANG=fr, LC_CTYPE=fr_FR

Versions of packages tetex-bin depends on:
ii  debianutils            1.15              Miscellaneous utilities specific t
ii  dpkg                   1.9.16            Package maintenance system for Deb
ii  ed                     0.2-19            The classic unix line editor
ii  libc6                  2.2.3-9           GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii  libkpathsea3           1.0.7+20001218-4  shared libkpathsea for teTeX
ii  libpng2                1.0.12-2          PNG library - runtime
ii  libstdc++2.10-glibc2.2 1:2.95.4-0.010424 The GNU stdc++ library
ii  libtiff3g              3.5.5-4           Tag Image File Format library
ii  libwww0                5.3.2-5           The W3C-WWW library.
ii  libxaw7                4.0.3-4           X Athena widget set library
ii  perl-base [perl5-base] 5.6.1-5           The Pathologically Eclectic Rubbis
ii  tetex-base             1.0.2+20000804-9  basic teTeX library files
ii  xlibs                  4.0.3-4           X Window System client libraries
ii  zlib1g                 1:1.1.3-15        compression library - runtime