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

[David Carlisle]

> 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.

I dont know what 7.0 will do, I'll let Karl answer for that.

You could implement that already in the current web2c TeX with a
suitable MakeTeXTeX if MakeTeXTeX is turned on at compile time.

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. 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)

David