[tlbuild] mtx and libp2c

[Reinhard Kotucha]

On 2012-04-08 at 18:27:08 -0400, Bob Tennent wrote:

 >  >|    > Only the mtx-0.60d tarball has been revised.  It now supports
 >  >|    building
 >  >|    > the prepmx binary without fpc (the Free Pascal Compiler) by
 >  >|    providing
 >  >|    > p2c-translated C source files and source files for libp2c.
 >  >|
 >  >|Sounds good, but I think I will let Peter take care of integrating it (a
 >  >|la pmx) upon his return while I work on other things.
 > 
 > Thanks.
 > 
 >  >|BTW, have mtx and pmx ever been packaged (separately from TL) for
 >  >|various distros?  I'm wondering if any distro people ever complained
 >  >|about the three-character command names for such (relatively) obscure
 >  >|programs, or if there is precedent and we shouldn't worry about it.
 > 
 > Both are distributed by MiKTeX and Debian; AFAIK they haven't
 > complained. Fedora won't distribute them until TeXLive does.

Hi Bob,
the name clash Mojca reported is quite significant.  The Linux disto
I'm using provides sys-block/mtx already.  It's a pity that the clash
hadn't been detected before.

Though renaming the file(s) now might break existing workflows, it
must be mentioned that mp had been renamed to mpost for exactly the
same reason (mp is a pretty printer).

The nasty thing here is that mtx is a system command and one can have
a lot of fun if another program with the same name exists in $PATH.

Generally speaking, I always vote for meaningful filenames.  I'm
wondering why people still remove a single letter from a meaningful
file name in order to make the file name fit the old MS-DOG 8.3 naming
scheme when uploading packages to CTAN, though this limitation doesn't
exist for many years anymore.

Don't know what you intend to do.  Maybe things can be remain as they
are (as proposed by Karl and Martin).  But if you consider renaming
the files, then *please* don't care about the 8.3 scheme.

I hope that Martin's statement is correct, with emphasis on "nobody".

 > Probably because nobody uses tapes anymore. :-)

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha                                      Phone: +49-511-3373112
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