[tex-live] texmf.cnf paths for format files
Jonathan Kew
jonathan_kew at sil.org
Thu Jan 18 13:38:06 CET 2007
In Master/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf, we currently have entries such as
TEXFORMATS = .;$TEXMF/web2c/{$engine,}
which means that .fmt files will be found either in the engine-
specific subdirectory (where fmtutil now places them by default), or
in the main web2c directory.
However, one issue that remains is that with this setting, naive use
of kpsewhich will not find the formats:
$ kpsewhich pdftex.fmt
$
It is necessary to use the --engine option, as in:
$ kpsewhich --engine=pdftex pdftex.fmt
/Users/jonathan/.texlive2007/texmf-var/web2c/pdftex/pdftex.fmt
$
This will confuse and frustrate users. Therefore, I propose that we
add // to the TEXFORMATS, MFBASES, and MPMEMS variables in texmf.cnf,
e.g.:
TEXFORMATS = .;$TEXMF/web2c/{$engine,}//
Then kpsewhich, with no --engine option, will search subdirectories
and find the expected format files.
The only case where there's potential confusion with this setting is
when there are multiple files with the same name in different
subdirectories of web2c; the ConTeXt formats are the only current
example where this happens. In this case, kpsewhich finds the pdftex-
based formats by default (at least for me; is this based on ASCII
ordering?); if invoked with --engine=xetex, it finds the xetex-based
version. This seems reasonable behavior.
Comments?
JK
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