Open Problems

[Paul Vojta]

On Mon Sep 18 07:46:08 1995, 
Joachim Schrod <schrod@iti.informatik.th-darmstadt.de> wrote:

> Thomas wrote:
> > 
> > >  -- One must not use texmf/tex// as search path, due to duplicate
> > >     files. TEXINPUTS must be set for each format anew. (There may be
> > >     reasonable defaults, but eventually that's the bottom line.)
> > >     [Paul Vojta]
> > 
> > I do not understand what the problem is. Or, are there systems where
> > setting up different search paths are difficult? Or, is the problem
> > that this is not yet properly explained in the current draft?
> 
> The latter. The draft gives the impression as if texmf/tex// might be
> a good (i.e., valid) TEXINPUTS path. That's not true, filenames are
> only unique over the trees tex/{<format>,generic}/. Come to think of
> it, perhaps this should be added as an explicit requirement.

On page 8 it says, ``a recursive search beginning at \path|texmf/tex|
is a correct path for {\TeX} inputs in a \abbr{TDS} tree.''  Are you saying
that this is incorrect?  Or, are you saying that this is correct but that
texmf/tex// is an incorrect path for {\AmSTeX} and {\LaTeX} inputs?
If the latter, then this leads to a problem for authors of dvi drivers.
PostScript figures are also stored under texmf/tex, and the dvi driver has
to access them without knowing whether the dvi file came from plain TeX,
LaTeX, AmSTeX, or other.  So non-uniqueness of file names will be a problem
at least for picture files.

--Paul Vojta, vojta@math.berkeley.edu