texmf/tex/config

[K. Berry]

    Is Babel a format?  

No, it's a generic package, or was last time I asked this question :-).

    Anyway, I thing the matter of config files may need 
    some clarifications. 

    1. Should \path{config} be reserved for config files that affect the base 
       format (and closely related packages) or should config files for 
       individual packages go here as well? (Take the example of tdsguide.cfg 
       if someone wanted to install tdsguidle.cls as a LaTeX package/bundle.)

    2. Should \path{config} be reserved to local/user generated config files
       while leaving distributed config files (like Babel's hyphen.cfg) 
       in the corresponding package directory? (Babel's configuration file
       is language.dat, which for some reason doesn't have a .cfg extension.)

    3. What about packages that may have arbitrary config files, such as
       myletter.cls, which has a \usename{} feature to load config files
       for individual letterheads.

    4. Should \path{config} be restriced to the local tree if there is 
       a distinction?

All these are good questions. I don't know the answers. Here's a proposal:

1) we drop the explicit config/ directory;

2) config files as distributed with the package go wherever the rest of
the package goes (why did we separate them in the first place?).

3) locally-modified config files are ``local additions'' and treated as
such. No need for a separate directory.

I think this matches reality more closely than our current text.
Is the latex base distribution really supposed to provide a config/
directory for its .cfg files, as we currently imply? Or the local
installer create a config directory on their cdrom :-)?