[tex-live] Omega and the recent changes in TDS

[Alexej Kryukov]

Hi,

First of all, sorry if I have selected a wromg mailing list
for my message. I don't use TL myself, and the problem my message 
is devoted to was encountered in teTeX 3.0. However, I
suppose (may be I am wrong) that at this point teTeX just mirrors
directory structure changes in TL, so that this mailing list
should be the right place to discuss the problem.

Let me introduce myself: I am developing antomega, an alternate
language support package for the omega/lambda system. My package
has a quite stable directory structure (at least so I supposed), where
most stuff goes to texmf/omega and texmf/omega/lambda. This is one
(but not the most important) reason why the recent changes in TDS look
hardly acceptable for me.

After installing teTeX 3.0 I realized that now the omega/ directory is
excluded from lambda's search path and all default Omega's stuff is
moved from omega/ to tex/ *except* ocp and otp files. Of course 
that's correct even according the recent TDS recommendations, since
ocp/otp files (Omega's  translation processes) have a non-TeX syntax 
and are engine-specific. The problem is, that these files are loaded by
lambda compiler as any other files (e. g. style packages) at the
runtime, and so they should be present in the search path! So even
standard translation processes are unaccessible with teTeX 3.0 default
configuration, which makes the whole omega system just unusable without
editing texmf.cnf.

Since my package provides a bunch of additional translation
processes, this problem is very actual for me. However, there are
other files which can hardly be integrated into the new directory
structure. For example, antomega includes its own hyphenation
patterns, mainly incompatible with standard tex/latex,
since they are 16-bit encoded. So, I would prefer to keep them
separately from patterns used by Babel, and the omega/ directory
seems to be the right place for them. My package also includes
its own version of hyphen.cfg; again, no reason to put it into tex/,
where it can cause clashes with the file provided with Babel.

So I think the omega/ directory should at least be returned into the
search path both for omega and lambda compilers. And, of course, I would
like to know, which directory structure I should use for my package in
order to keep it compatible with future versions of TL and teTeX.
I would prefer to keep anything as it is, since the recent TDS 
recommendations just seem hardly applicable to omega.

-- 
Regards,
Alexej Kryukov <akrioukov at newmail dot ru>

Moscow State University
Historical Faculty