[tex-live] Having a .fmt for different engines

[Philip & Le Khanh]

Reinhard Kotucha wrote:
 >>>>>>"Norbert" == Norbert Preining <preining at logic.at> writes:
 >
 >
 >   > It would be great to get fmtutil to this point where something
 >   > like this is possible, considering that context canbe run with
 >   > engines like xetex, aleph, pdftex, whatever, and all under the
 >   > name cont-{en,fr,...}
 >
 > Hmm, I don't know whether subdirectories in web2c are a good
 > solution.  Having different files with the same name on a system can
 > be confusing too.  A few years ago this had been deprecated.  Did
 > public opinion change?

Isn't this why environment variables exist ?  I seem to recall
that when we debated e-TeX methodology, I argued strongly for
eTeX_Inputs, eTeX_formats and so on, just so that one /could/
have duplicate filenames within a single system without there
being a risk of conflict.  Provided that each executable has
a matching set of logical names / environment variables, one
can have as many files of the same name as one has executables,
with each executable "knowing" where to look for its matching
files ...

** Phil.