[tex-live] Re: [NTG-pdftex] Re: Problem with latest pdfTeX 1.11a release?

[Staszek Wawrykiewicz]

On Thu, 7 Aug 2003, Thomas Esser wrote:

> I'd prefer a solution wich is better than n*m entries in texmf.cnf (n =
> number of formats, m = number of tex engines).
> 
> Solution a)
> 
>   (does not really solve the n*m problem, but provides a good
>   default-TEXINPUTS and has other advantages):
> 
>   ENGINE variable, set by each engine, but with different values (not
>   depending on progname, but on the real engine). It could have the
>   following values (examples):
> 
>       engine       $ENGINE
>       ==============================
>       pdfetex      {pdftex,etex,tex}
>       etex         {etex,tex}
>       eomega       {omega,etex,tex}
> 
>   If every engine defines that $ENGINE, than we could have e.g.
>     TEXINPUTS = .;$TEXMF/$ENGINE/{generic,}//
>     TEXINPUTS.latex = .;$TEXMF/$ENGINE/{latex,generic,}//
> 
>   This solution also takes care of "behind the scene" changes, e.g.
>   if latex switches from tex to etex as engine. 
> 
> Solution b)
>   Drop all texmf/pdftex, texmf/pdfetex, texmf/omega, ... things in
>   favor of texmf/tex. History has shown that most macro packages
>   which are not written for "tex", but for some other engine
>   already detect the engine. There are only very few conflicts
>   between these trees, one is e.g. webmac.tex, but that can easily
>   be fixed by replacing tex/plain/base/webmac.tex with a wrapper
>   which first detects the engine and then ready either the "real"
>   webmac.tex or pdfwebmac.tex.
> 
> b) should be discussed on the TDS list if other people share my opinion.
> BTW: my favorite solution is b).
> 
> Thomas

Great idea! I'd vote for b) and suggest it for TL 2003

-- 
Staszek Wawrykiewicz
StaW at gust.org.pl