On Thu, 7 Aug 2003, Thomas Esser wrote:
I'd prefer a solution wich is better than n*m entries in texmf.cnf (n = number of formats, m = number of tex engines).
Solution a)
(does not really solve the n*m problem, but provides a good default-TEXINPUTS and has other advantages):
ENGINE variable, set by each engine, but with different values (not depending on progname, but on the real engine). It could have the following values (examples):
engine $ENGINE ============================== pdfetex {pdftex,etex,tex} etex {etex,tex} eomega {omega,etex,tex}
If every engine defines that $ENGINE, than we could have e.g. TEXINPUTS = .;$TEXMF/$ENGINE/{generic,}// TEXINPUTS.latex = .;$TEXMF/$ENGINE/{latex,generic,}//
This solution also takes care of "behind the scene" changes, e.g. if latex switches from tex to etex as engine.
Solution b) Drop all texmf/pdftex, texmf/pdfetex, texmf/omega, ... things in favor of texmf/tex. History has shown that most macro packages which are not written for "tex", but for some other engine already detect the engine. There are only very few conflicts between these trees, one is e.g. webmac.tex, but that can easily be fixed by replacing tex/plain/base/webmac.tex with a wrapper which first detects the engine and then ready either the "real" webmac.tex or pdfwebmac.tex.
b) should be discussed on the TDS list if other people share my opinion. BTW: my favorite solution is b).
Thomas
Great idea! I'd vote for b) and suggest it for TL 2003 -- Staszek Wawrykiewicz StaW@gust.org.pl