[tex-live] Having a .fmt for different engines

Reinhard Kotucha reinhard.kotucha at web.de
Fri Jan 5 02:20:26 CET 2007


>>>>> "Philip" == Philip & Le Khanh <Philip-and-LeKhanh at Royal-Tunbridge-Wells.Org> writes:

  > Reinhard Kotucha wrote:
  >>>>>>> "Norbert" == Norbert Preining <preining at logic.at> writes:
  >> 
  >> 
  >> > It would be great to get fmtutil to this point where something
  >> > like this is possible, considering that context canbe run with
  >> > engines like xetex, aleph, pdftex, whatever, and all under the
  >> > name cont-{en,fr,...}
  >> 
  >> Hmm, I don't know whether subdirectories in web2c are a good
  >> solution.  Having different files with the same name on a system
  >> can be confusing too.  A few years ago this had been deprecated.
  >> Did public opinion change?

  > Isn't this why environment variables exist ?  I seem to recall
  > that when we debated e-TeX methodology, I argued strongly for
  > eTeX_Inputs, eTeX_formats and so on, just so that one /could/ have
  > duplicate filenames within a single system without there being a
  > risk of conflict.  Provided that each executable has a matching
  > set of logical names / environment variables, one can have as many
  > files of the same name as one has executables, with each
  > executable "knowing" where to look for its matching files ...

I don't claim that it can't be done be done this way.  But I doubt that
it's reasonable.  I don't think that it makes sense to change things
in gwTeX only.  And as far as TeXLive is concerned I think that it's
quite inappropriate to ask for new features *now*.

But I also do not want that TeX distributions diverge.

I also do not see a great benefit.  It will be obsolete in two years
anyway. 

Well, if there would be volunteers....

Regards,
  Reinhard

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