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Re: Braindump: Can we get rid of the font-cache-group question?



Mail Delivery System <Mailer-Daemon@kuesterei.ch> wrote:

 Ralf Stubner <ralf.stubner@web.de> wrote:

> Hi everybody,
>
> the question how to setup the font cache is really complicated. The
> default is not what we recommend for most installations, there are users
> that are not to familiar with the concept of groups, ... I think it is
> possible to get rid of this problem alltogether by changing the
> configuration of kpathsea, specifically the mktex* scripts. 

I think this is a horribly good idea...

> Right now in
>
> /usr/share/texmf-tetex/web2c/mktex.cnf
>
> we set
>
> ${MT_FEATURES=3Dappendonlydir:varfonts}
>
> (probably similar for TeX Live). From what I read in TETEXDOC section
> 2.6, I think that we would be better off with
>
> ${MT_FEATURES=3Dtexmfvar}

 Yes; strange that MT_FEATURES is set twice, first in mktex.opt, then
 overridden in mktex.cnf.  I put a copy of mktex.cnf into
 /etc/texmf/web2c/, changed the setting, and it works.  For the
 distribution, I think we should change
 /usr/share/texmf-tetex/web2c/mktex.cnf.

> AFAIKT this would cause all created fonts to be written to TEXMFVAR,
> which is in the users HOME. This would work without the need for any
> debconf questions. The only disadvantage I can see is the case of a
> multi-user machine where cached font data should be shared among
> different users. In that case I would expect an admin who can change the
> configuration, create fonts in advance, etc if pointed to the right
> documentation.

 Yes, README.Debian.

> For single-user machines or buildds I see no
> disadvantage. Comments?

 My only concern is:  On a build system, can we really assume that there
 is a valid home directory where we can create directory trees and
 (possibly lots of) files?

 Regards, Frank

-- 
Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX)



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