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

[Hans Hagen]

Taco Hoekwater wrote:
>> Given that we are not getting the different extensions back, how 
>> difficult would it be to let ConTeXT use a different names strategy 
>> comparable to the current rest? E.g.
>>
>>     xtx-cont-en.fmt
>>     pdf-cont-en.fmt
>
> Context has a very important life cycle (distribution) besides being
> included on TeXLive, so I feel confident (but keep in mind that I
> am not actually Hans Hagen) in saying that the answer is: This will
> not happen in the upstream package.
indeed
>
> Many Context users do not reinstall from scratch, but instead update
> their system regularly, so there is a pressing need to be backward
> compatible with already existing installations. Definately more so
> than TeXLive, which is essentially throw-away-and-reinstall-each-year
> software.
indeed

we've spent too much time keeping up with tex live's incompatibility issues (time we'd rather spend on development and manuals and such)

also, the debian package has proved that it can be done for unixes so i consider the problem solved 

a quite acceptable in-between solution is to not generate context formats on tex live, if only because users can do that themselves using texexec and/or ctxtools --update; from posts at the context list i deduce that updating via debian packages also works well, as does updating via gerbens installer; akira also has everything on his website, so it's only tex live that has a problem. 

and, as taco mentioned, it may be an issue for 2007, but then the situation may as well be completely different again  

so let's end the discussion here because it's not gonna get solved 

Hans 

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