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

[Thomas Esser]

Hi Alexej,

> exists. That's why in antomega I used to apply an \IfFileExists test
> before loading any OCP. There are good reasons to do so, because some

It would be good if we could find a better solution for checking for
existence than putting the files into TEXINPUTS. Files which are not
TeX syntax should not be there. Maybe, something that you should discuss
with the Omega developers or Olaf Weber.

> Well, as I have said, antomega requires a latex based format. I
> can't rewrite the whole latex.ltx to make antomega independent from
> latex, and this is really not needed. However, loading latex.ltx into

Well, you could use
  tex/antomega/{base,extra,...}
for your directory structure and have
  TEXINPUTS.antomega = = .;$TEXMF/tex/{antomega,latex,generic,}//

Then, your hyphen.cfg somewhere in tex/antomega would only affect the
antomega format.

> And that's why I think the new TDS is illogical: it provides engine
> specific directories only for latex-based formats, but not for plain

Well, in some sense, we have a mapping (engine,format) -> identifier, e.g.
  (omega,latex) -> lambda
  (aleph,latex) -> lamed

This, however, was not invended by the authors of the TDS, rather than
the people who have developed the new engines. If, for some reason, you
need a new identifier, just create it (even for plain based formats).
Such an identifier only makes sense if it is used in TEXINPUTS
definitions, such as the example of TEXINPUTS.antomega given above.

So, if this directory layout is the way to go, you need to ask your
users to modify their texmf.cnf file (until your change ends up in all
TeX distributions).

> the whole tex/generic/encodings/ directory is omega-specific, and I
> don't understand why it should be in tex search path.

Looks like TeX syntax to me...

Thomas