[tex-live] Extended TeX : Integration with the TeX Live Package Manager ?

[Philip TAYLOR]

Robin Fairbairns wrote:

> since the details of the behaviour of i/o isn't specified in tex, it
> doesn't need an extended tex, merely a jolly good library.
> 
> what you describe is achieved by miktex.  there's a database of all
> files in the set of miktex bundles, and "open file" is allowed to fork
> off a network process to retrieve a known file that's not currently on
> disc (in fact it retrieves the package that contains the file).  (doing
> this is subject to user control -- you don't _have_ to wait while files
> are retrieved: you can elect to have "file not found" errors...)
> 
> note that this scheme doesn't have to worry about dependency
> relationships.  which is nice.

OK, sounds good : I can't decide whether
an explicit \Requires is better than an
implicit lookup on a "file not found",
but I suspect that it is, since one might
have meant (let's assume that the user
wrote "\input cropmarks.sty") that a locally-
written file of that name was to be included
rather than something found at CTAN.  If
the file has an explicit "\Requires Cropmarks",
then it could be safely inferred that this
is a CTAN package (or collection : I skip over
that distinction for simplicity).

** Phil.