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Re: teTeX and TeX Live interoperability



On Fri, Nov 18, 2005 at 09:31 +0100, Frank Küster wrote:
> Ralf Stubner <ralf.stubner@web.de> wrote:
> 
> I think this does comply with Policy - it is simply a hint which files
> make sense as configuration files, while it is in principle possible to
> move a copy of any file to /etc/texmf.  The only concern is what happens
> when one of these files change.  But I don't think this is really a big
> problem, if we document it.  There might be rare cases where a change in
> syntax or the necessity to define some macro in the configuration file
> would cause the package to no longer work.  But that is less annoying
> than what happens when an incompatible change happens in texmf.cnf or
> updmap.cfg. 

Hmm, I guess one could argue that with TeX there is no clear distinction
between configuration files and 'normal' files, since one can basicly
redefine anything everywhere. This is different from configuration files
for other programs, which have a fixed syntax. 

> > What files should be left in
> > /etc/texmf/?
> 
> - The snippets in updmap.d, fmt.d, texmf.d, language.d
> - All toplevel directories, even if empty
> - a copy/symlink of the README file
> 
> I am unsure about non-LaTeX configuration files (dvipdfm/config,
> cyrplain/cyrtex.cfg and so on).

Applying the above logic, dvipdfm/config should stay in /etc/texmf,
since it is the configuration files for a 'normal' program, while
cyrplain/cyrtex.cfg should reside in TEXMFDIST. THe question is where to
put it. Maybe one could leave all these 'configuration files' at their
original location and only document in a README in /etc/texmf/ which
files might be used for configuration.

Having configuration files for normal programs in /etc/texmf/ leave some
interoperability problems. It would be best if these files where part of
the appropriate *-bin package, since those have to conflict anyway. But
that looks rather complicated.

cheerio
ralf



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