Re: [tex-live] Proposal for collection reorganization
Norbert Preining wrote:
Hi Robin, hi all!
On Son, 04 Jun 2006, Robin Fairbairns wrote:
pdf-trans -- Transformations of TeX boxes for pdfTeX.
this one is not related to LaTeX, should be left standalone.
as anyone who cared to read the catalogue entry would have known.
Ok.
when did thumbpdf stop being a standalone script (called by a shell
wrapper).
In fact I have reverted this change in Debian. Currently in TL it is a
link to texexec, which executes the .pl in TEXMFDIST. I moved for the
Debian packages the .pl script into /usr/bin instead of the link. I
would say this makes more sense.
thumbpdf is not related to context or texexec so i think that there is
an error there:
texexec = self resolving stub to calling parent => texexec.pl
pdfthumb => link to texexec => self resolving stub to calling parent =>
pdfthumb.pl
anyhow, the context texexec.pl script has been replaced by a ruby variant
the recommended way to cal context related scripts (for unix) is as
follows but there are alternatives possible (up to the packager)
- copy texmfstart.rb (from scripts/context/ruby) to a
someplace/bin/texmfstart
- create stubs in bin, either manually, or by using:
texmfstart --make all
such a stub looks like:
#!/bin/sh
texmfstart texexec.rb $@
so, texmfstart is the launching program. I've introduced this approach
for several reasons:
- this way i'm independent of changes in tds (i only need to adapt
texmfstart) in the sense that i can provide backaward compatibility
(i've been bitten in the tail too often)
- it does some caching of paths (passing kpse lookups to child calls)
when scripts call other ones which speeds up processing
- by using 'texmfstart somescript' directly one does not need stubs
which avoids conflicts with names
- it can be used (in web server apps) to initialize multiple tex trees
(needed when one runs old and new trees in parallel)
- it can act as a kpse server (by using a built in kpse functionality)
which in more complex workflows is faster
- it can locate and launch documentation and/or assiciated programs
- it can be used to launch application that need full paths to resource
files in the texmf tree
- some more
the collection of scripts that come with context is rather large and not
all of them need to be stubbed; the prefered list is:
texexec (former perl script, now ruby script with integrated texutil;
manages tex runs and creates formats)
texutil (former perl script, now ruby script, stripped down
functionality, will become obsolete
texfont (perl script, will be ruby script some day, creates tex font
metric files)
pstopdf (former perl script, now ruby script, assumes gs and optionally
imagemagick and inkscape to be present)
mptopdf (perl script, will become integrated in mpstools)
makempy (perl script, will become integrated in mpstools)
ctxtools (ruby script)
pdftools (ruby scrip)
xmltools(ruby script)
textools (ruby script)
mpstools(ruby script)
tmftools (ruby script)
exatools (ruby script)
runtools (ruby script)
rlxtools (ruby script)
existing aliases in the alias file (when present) related to context
need to be removed (should not have been present in the first place)
in order to work well with xetex, aleph and pdftex, contex assumes that
the TEXFONTMAPS path is set to: (i get reports that this is not the case
in linux distributions)
TEXFONTMAPS = .;$TEXMF/fonts/map/{$progname,pdftex,dvips,}//
So far,
Hans
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