[tex-live] supp* on TL [was:] Proposal for collection reorganization

[Hans Hagen]

Staszek Wawrykiewicz wrote:
> Hans:
>   
>> i have no problem with providing 
>>
>> supp-pdf-ripoff.tex 
>> supp-mis-ripoff.tex 
>>
>> which tne can be put someplace else in the tree (i.e. someone whould 
>> then adapt latex to load that file); the independent mptopdf format 
>> is something else; if someone wants that, installing the context tex 
>> files is a small price to pay (mptopdf provides more features and may 
>> even demand more context support files once metapost gets extended). 
>>     
>
> May I vote against that? Hans, please, it would be a horror to keep
> the two instances, even for you. Not to mention that latex users have to 
> follow that (also in all existing documentations), and... even pdftex 
> basic example should be changed.
> Let's try to find an another solution which could satisfy all (not only
> latex and context users :-)
> Please, consider that supp* files were adopted by the rest of the world
> (Robin and Karl have already kindly mentioned well that).
> So, having always in mind that such files are _basic_ for context users,
> would you please consider moving them to tex/generic/context/
> Of course, you can still keep such a new layout in cont-tmf.zip.
> Both pdflatex and context users could benefit it in the real distributions
> like TL, MiKTeX, etc. All in all, the packagers like Karl or Christian or me
> could provide collections like "context" (context+cont-mpd), as well as
> pdfetex (containing only cont-mpd). It would be somehow easier to follow such
> exception for distributions.
>   
for me, it would introduce many problems with the trees that i have all over the place (there have been similar problems before when files moved due to changes in tds and i lost way too much time by that); 

of course, you're free to move the files there if you want, since the context zip only reflects one way of packaging 

also, there are more generic files in context (like syst-gen) which is used in ppchtex (actually, in the coming overhaul of context quite some files will become more generic); on the other hand, keeping files generic is rather painful [there have been quite some patches in supp-pdf because of interference with latex package loading for instance] 

now, since we're only talking of supp-pdf, i can imagine the following to happen

- i create a meta-pdf.tex file for context; there i can also start optimizing the code (speed up, using more context system features) 
- supp-pdf and supp-mis then are no longer used in context and can move 
to generic; i can still maintain them and provide patches (although the converter is by now rather stable) 

(btw, there is not that much real generic code in tex live -) 

Hans 




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