[tex-live] Bad .cfg files in TeX source tree?

[Frank Küster]

Jonathan Kew <jonathan_kew at sil.org> wrote:

> Packages like this that test the engine and configure their back-end
> accordingly need to be updated to support xetex; in many cases, this
> will just mean checking for the xetex engine (e.g. using ifxetex.sty)
> and activating the same code as for pdftex. I haven't had time to
> pursue this with all the package maintainers, though (and until xetex
> became part of mainstream distributions, the incentive to support it
> in standard packages wasn't so strong, either).

Wouldn't it be a good idea to have this functionality at a central
place, i.e. one file that's loaded by many packages?  This would also
give users a central place for switching the default for DVI output from
dvips to dvipdfm(x) or hypertex.  Currently there are a couple of
packages which hardcode dvips (Today I came across one that loads
[dvips]{hyperref} if \pdfoutput=0).

Then we would have to convince package authors to use this interface to
the detection of engine/output format, and both distributors, local
admins or individual users could make sensible choices.

Regards, Frank

-- 
Dr. Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)