[tex-live] ifplatform: Detection of TeX Live on Windows

[Zdenek Wagner]

2009/8/26 Karl Berry <karl at freefriends.org>:
>    the times when there was a 8.3 rule in TDS. Is it finally dropped?
>
> Well, the rule was more of a recommendation, and was never enforced (or
> enforceable), like the rest of the TDS, so there isn't anything much to
> drop.
>
> I don't think there was ever a TL (or tetex, or even texk) distribution
> which was completely 8.3.  Probably have to go back to emtex for that ...
>
emTeX was written primarily for OS/2 with HPFS file system (file name
length limit 260 characters) but could also work on FAT and in DOS. It
tried to handle long names in \input, \usepackage etc. Eg in
\usepackage{fancyheadings} if fancyheadings.sty could not be found, it
tried fancyngs.sty and fancyhea.sty (even on HPFS). Unzip as well as
tar in OS/2 always handled illegal file names and Eberhard Mattes knew
what these tools do, therefore emTeX used similar algoritms in order
to make the TeX files as portable as possible.


-- 
Zdeněk Wagner
http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/
http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz