[tex-live] cleaning up of tree

George N. White III aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca
Mon Feb 9 14:29:02 CET 2004


On Mon, 9 Feb 2004, Hans Hagen wrote:

> In the process of cleaning up the tree etc, are we going to stick to the 8
> byte names? Like:
>
>    bitstrea -> bitstream
>
> we have filenames > 8 bit already ...

The policy needs to be spelled out clearly somewhere so we can
differentiate between bugs and features.  Ideally, TeX should work with
"typical" filenames on each platform (e.g., handle filenames with spaces
and even things that Americans don't use), but use names acceptable to all
supported platforms for the distribution.  Should it be acceptable to
have "Local site-specific funny stuff/.../texmf-local", e.g., a
platform-specific path prefix to the texmf* directories even if the
contents of those directories must satisfy stricter policies.

An edge case is where site policy forces users to install things under a
path that contains names with embedded spaces and glyphs not found in
ASCII.  If the TeX documentation gives a good rationale for why such paths
won't work, it would make it easier to win arguments over whether
exceptions can be made for TeX.

--
George N. White III  <aa056 at chebucto.ns.ca>
  Head of St. Margarets Bay, Nova Scotia, Canada


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