[twg-tds] scripts, enc/lig/map

[Thomas Esser]

> Rephrased:  *If* texmf trees were made system and distrubution independent,
> *then* how many people worldwide would be sharing texmf trees between
> distributions?  (In the original sentence, "would be" != "are".)

Fact is that TeX Live runs on many UNIX systems *and* Windows. And,
miktex's texmf tree is largely based on TeX Live's. So, what your are
talking about is reality.

> Likely benefits:
> 
> 	Possible ease in applying patches
> 	Ability to combine texmf trees across widely different systems

        Consistency between macro packages and scripts. There are
        dependencies, take thubmpdf as a small example and context
        as a larger one.

When I suggested this texmf/scripts path, this was what I had in mind.
Storing these scripts in the texmf tree makes the texmf tree more
"self-contained" and consistent. It also eases up updates between
src tarballs / texmf tarballs of teTeX and helps people who redistribute
parts of them. E.g. Gerben's distribution for MAC OS X is based on
teTeX's texmf tree and TeX Live's src tree.

> Benefits would go to only a small fraction of systems administrators,

And TeX distribution maintainers who make systems available for a large
crowd of people...

> Am I really the only one who sees a problem here?

Nobody mandates that scripts *have* to to into the texmf tree. There are
scripts where the maintenance aspects outweighs the performance penalty.
That's where I want to use it.

Thomas