Re: Braindump: Can we get rid of the font-cache-group question?
Norbert Preining <preining@logic.at> wrote:
> 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.
... and drop mktex.cnf from later versions of 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?
I think we should try to find a solution where font cache data do not
usually disappear regularly. Either a per-user setup in $HOME, or a
system-wide setup in /var/cache/fonts. /tmp should only be a last
resort.
>> 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.
Okay, that sounds sensible.
>> But old cached font
>> data would still be lost on normal user machines.
But only on machines where TEXMFVAR is not writable, which doesn't sound
very probable. Therefore, I think this is not an issue.
> 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
Shouldn't that be `kpsewhich --format="don't remember" 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
Couldn't we do it *without*any* questions?
- /var/cache/fonts exists, with standard permissions (0755)
- mktex.cnf is a conffile, with
VARTEXFONTS=/tmp/texfonts
MT_FEATURES=texmfvar
- NEWS.Debian and README.Debian instruct how to set up a system-wide
VARTEXFONTS directory in /var/cache/fonts or elsewhere
* new install:
Fonts are cached in TEXMFVAR, except on strange setups where it is not
writable. For single-user machines, this has functionality as good as
caching in /var/cache/fonts. For multi-user machines, people can read
in README.Debian how to centralize the font cache
* upgrade:
Fonts in /var/cache/fonts are lost (this is even better than
README.Debian, people will simply notice it...) unless the admin
changes settings.
I think this is more in line with Ralf's original proposal. And it
follows the KISS principle, and doesn't introduce any behavior not in
the upstream distribution.
Regards, Frank
--
Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX)
Reply to: