[tex-live] tu-clash

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 2017-02-28 at 00:01:50 GMT, Karl Berry wrote:

 >     It's a pity that nobody suggested such a
 >     change during the teTeX-2.0 beta tests.
 > 
 > Thomas E. and I did discuss it. At that time, the infrastructure
 > (of making formats, automatic updates) was far less developed, not
 > to say nonexistent, and the choice was not clear. Ultimately we
 > decided that it would be better for users if "fmtutil" continued to
 > be for user areas, and the new program, fmtutil-sys, would be for
 > system areas, thus (we thought) putting the burden on people more
 > able to handle it.
 > 
 > As things have developed, that was the wrong decision, but it was
 > an actual decision with some rationale, not just a random choice.

Hi Karl,
this is exactly what I surmised.  At that time nobody considered that
TeX systems could be updated at any time one day.  AFAIR the only
complaits came from system admins who accidentally ran updmap or
fmtutil with root permissions and the created files were installed at
/root instead of beeing visible to users.

 > I'm not sure if we can ameliorate the situation now.

For updmap one could consider a set of symlinks:

  mktexmap -> updmap-sys
  mktexmap-user -> updmap

and replace updmap with mktexmap in the documentation.  Existing
scripts will still work, newbies will use the new names, people who
are using teTeX/TeX Live for decades probably need some time in order
to change their habits.

fmtutil is more difficult because there is a similar symlink already:

  mktexfmt -> fmtutil

I don't know how dangerous it is to change it now

  mktexfmt -> fmtutil-sys
  mktexfmt-user -> fmtutil

If such a change is considered too dangerous,

  mktexformat -> fmtutil-sys
  mktexformat-user -> fmtutil

could be an alternative though I think mktexfmt is the better name.

Werner, a link from fmtutil to fmtutil-user isn't sufficient because
the main problem is that people invoke fmtutil accidentally.  And they
will do even if fmtutil-user is available.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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