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

[Alexej Kryukov]

On Sunday 21 August 2005 21:46, Thomas Esser wrote:
>
> 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, discussing anything with the Omega developers certainly makes no
sense, because they absolutely don't care about their users.

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

Hence the problem. Yes, there are special directories for most
(engine,format) pairs, but no directories for files which are
related with a specific engine rather than with a specific
format, and still have a TeX syntax. This is the case of hyphenation
patterns, or, say, those *.onm files which currently reside in 
tex/generic/encodings.

BTW, I am wondering why plain omega (unlike lambda) even hasn't 
its own directory in the search path (i. e. something like
texmf/tex/plainomega).

> 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.

I just don't understand why I have to put into a format-specific
directory something that really is only engine-specific.

> 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).

If I have to ask my users to modify texmf.cnf anyway, I'd rather
ask them to change the search paths for omega and lambda.

> > 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...

Of course, but this doesn't make them useful for tex (they are probably
useless for omega as well, but that's another issue). The whole
problem I am speaking about is related only with engine specific files
which, unfortunately, look more or less like TeX packages.

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

Moscow State University
Historical Faculty