[dviout] Settings of dviout in TeX Live

[T T]

On 25 August 2013 22:53, KUROKI Yusuke <kuroky at users.sourceforge.jp> wrote:
> In the current settings of dviout in TL, users could not
> reuse their own settings even if he/she intended to
> save them. because runscript.tlu calls tlpkg/dviout
> with '-NULL' option.  TL's basic policy seems that
> TL makes efforts to provide well-customized initial settings
>  for users, but also provides users with some ways to
> change the initial settings.  To follow the policy,
> I would like to offer a solution for dviout.
>
> Solution is as follows:
> - patches the attached runscript.tlu.patch to bin/win32/runscript.tlu, and
> - put the attached install.par in 2013/tlpkg/dviout directory.
> After this change, users can change any settings except
> Font2/gen, Font/TEXROOT, and Graphic/gsx.
> Since the exceptions relate to the absolute path
> in the TL tree, it is natural that TL guess them and
> override them every time (by runscript.tlu).
> Other Resolution/dpi and Font/TEXPK settings
> should be free to change but should be provided
> well-customized way, then these two settings are
> written in install.par.
> When a user saves the settings on each TAB of
> dviout -> Option -> Setup Parameters,
> the settings on the TAB are saved in the registry of
> the user: it is desired operation of dviout.
>
> Would you apply the proposed solution?

Thanks for your suggestion and patches, however, writing settings into
the registry is something we don't want in TL, as there is no sensible
way we can manage that on the distribution level.  If dviout would
allow to read/write its settings from/to some configuration file given
by, say, a command line option or an environment variable, then I
would be happy to accommodate your request, but currently this is not
possible AFAIK (but I looked into that a few years ago).

Tomek

PS. It is already possible to save/read parameter files through menu
options, so I guess it shouldn't be too big of a change to allow
storing/retrieving settings to/from a file instead of the registry,
but it would be up to the program author to add such a feature.