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

[Thomas Esser]

Dear Alexej,

> 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

No, this is not the right description for the development process. In
fact, such implementation details are revised over time and usually
discussed on the TDS mailing list before they are implemented. It is
just a matter of timing whether a stand-alone web2c distribution or TeX
Live or teTeX is the first release implementing something new.

> 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

The kpathsea library provides an API to locate files along different
omega specific search paths, e.g. kpse_otp_format. The implementation
needs to be changed to access OTP files only via these search formats.

> 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.

Some omega is quite useless in teTeX-3.0. Interestingly, I did not get
a single bug report about it. Where are the users of omega? What binaries
are they using? Is none of them using teTeX?

> 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

The TDS working group has decided against the engine specific separation.
I think that you should raise your issues there, but I also suggest
that you search the list archives for thediscussion that has led to
this decision.

> 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.

That file can be in a format specific subdirectory in tex/. The version
in tex/generic will then be used for all formats which don't have their
own file *and* sarch path.

> 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.

TDS-1.1 and the engines (omega, aleph etc.) should be fixed.

Thomas