Hi, The latest distribution has an experimental ruby kpse class in kpsefast.rb (expects updates -). As far as i can measure it's not slower than native kpse and once loaded in a ruby prog it's faster of than reinvoking kpse each time; it can (optionaly) dump the database in a home/temp path which halves loading time. I will probably use this mechanism in the coming texexec/texutil (maybe also in texmfstart). The associated variant of kpsewhich is 'tmftools' (no help yet). Apart from basic kpsewhich functionality it will harbor more tree tools. texmfstart tfmtools --analyze --root=/whatever/tex texmfstart tfmtools --analyze --root=/whatever/tex --trees=texmf,texmf-local can be very instructive on duplicate files on your machine and point you to problems. It has a --delete option which can be used as follows texmfstart tfmtools --analyze --root=/whatever/tex --delete "texmf-local/fonts/.*/lm" this will remove dups in texmf-local (to be sure, one needs to pass --force as well) Hans ----------------------------------------------------------------- Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands tel: 038 477 53 69 | fax: 038 477 53 74 | www.pragma-ade.com | www.pragma-pod.nl -----------------------------------------------------------------