why is e.g. web2c in the texmf tree?

[Werner Lemberg]

On Mon, 11 Nov 1996, David Carlisle wrote:

> 
> 
> > Another question which is also related to the TDS: will web2c-7.0 support
> > DOS filename searching? E.g. LongTable.sty: first you search
> > LongTable.sty, then longtable.sty, then longtabl.sty (8.3), and finally
> > longtble.sty (5+3.3). Then you could access TDS trees on CDROMs without
> > great problems.
> 
> You could implement that already in the current web2c TeX with a
> suitable MakeTeXTeX if MakeTeXTeX is turned on at compile time.

I don't have the sources at hand. I assume this is a script or program
which tries to find missing TeX files. Do you know whether this has been
switched on in teTeX 0.4? 

> It was my understanding that you could *not* rely that mounting the CD
> filesystem will make any kind of simple truncation as you suggest
> above, it may encode the name completely to try to ensure uniqueness
> within the 8+3 namespace, so longtable.sty may end up as longtab~.a8h
> or whatever.

You are right, but in my opinion this is a bad design of the program which
converts long names to RockRidge. I believe that in 99% you can arrange
long names in either 8.3 or 5+3.3 using lowercase (or uppercase) only. 
Perhaps the people of the TeX live CD could do some research in this
direction so people under DOS can use it too. AFAIK there is no CD driver
even for OS/2 which supports RockRidge...

> In these cases it is probably just better to install
> those few files with bad names into the local texmf tree on the host
> system (or try to persuade the author to change the original file
> name)

Well, treat this letter as a first official request for this :-)


    Werner