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

[Norbert Preining <preining@logic.at>]

Hi Ralf!

On Die, 23 Mai 2006, Ralf Stubner wrote:
> I could imagine tex-common installing an appropriate mktex.cnf file. I
> am not sure what the best location would be, though.

True, this should be no problem and override the mktex.cnf in
tetex/texlive.

> > Whatabout changing VARTEXFONTS or whatever to /tmp/texfonts? /tmp should
> > be always writable for everyone. Only problem is what happens if /tmp is
> > cleaned ...
> 
> Cached font data would go away and would have to be recreated the next
> time a font is used. Not really nice for people who use the EC fonts.

Therefor we have world-writeable /var/cache/fonts. If the answer to this
is no, then you loose the caching of fonts, but what would one user
expect?

> That would be a possibility for my second proposal, though. If TEXMFVAR
> is not writable, which should only happen for buildds etc, VARTEXFONTS
> is used. If that is set to /tmp/texfonts, no issues with additional
> created files in the current directory would occur. But old cached font
> data would still be lost on normal user machines.

We put a mktex.cnf into /etc/texmf and there is only one question with
three options:
	. set VARTEXFONTS to /tmp/texfonts
	. set VARTEXFONTS to /var/cache/fonts world writeable
	. leave everything alone

The logic would be:

/var/cache/fonts is with normal permissions in tex-common (nothing
fancy)

* new install:
	VARTEXFONTS = /tmp/texfonts
		do nothing
	VARTEXFONTS = /var/cache/fonts
		chmod ugo+rw /var/cache/fonts
	leave alone
		well do nothing, if it breaks, bad ...
		I would put VARTEXFONTS=/var/cache/fonts into
		mktex.cnf in this case

* upgrade
	ignore all settings currently saved/asked
	check for /etc/texmf/mktex.cnf
	read the value
	propose a answer according to it
		- if VTF=/tmp/texfonts	variant 1
		- if VTF=/var/cache/fonts AND worldwriteable: variant 2
		- if anything else: variant 3

Comments
	

Best wishes

Norbert

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Norbert Preining <preining AT logic DOT at>             Università di Siena
gpg DSA: 0x09C5B094      fp: 14DF 2E6C 0307 BE6D AD76  A9C0 D2BF 4AA3 09C5 B094
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DOGDYKE (vb.)
Of dog-owners, to adopt the absurd pretence that the animal shitting
in the gutter is nothing to do with them.
			--- Douglas Adams, The Meaning of Liff