[tex-live] binaries 'unification'

[Vladimir Volovich]

"GW" == Gerben Wierda writes:

 GW> I did not notice that this was teh case. I do a TL build under
 GW> Mac OS X 10.2.8 which is followed by some fixes, like the ttf2tex
 GW> and altpdf* which is added from my local development setup.

I think that you should submit additional stuff to all architectures
(i.e. into the source tree, rather than into your bin directory), or
else just distribute additional stuff yourself. It is not good to add
something from your local development setup, into just one of the unix
architectures.

 >> 3) it contains the ttf2tex script (from CTAN:support/ttf2tex ?)
 >> 
 >> My questions are:
 >> 
 >> 1) could we please use the same set of altpdf* scripts everywhere?

 GW> What I submit is what is in my i-Package. This is based on TL
 GW> with a few changes.

Again, it's better to make changes not in your bin directory, but in
the source tree. Otherwise we will end up with each binary directory
containing it's own set of files added by someone who happened to
build it for TeX Live.

 >> 2) Gerben, could you please consider getting rid of this bunch of
 >> scripts (which are copies of each other)

 GW> It is weird that these are copies. They should all be symlinks to
 GW> altpdftex. It seems that there inclusion in the directories
 GW> (which I have never done myself) somehow changes this.

Having them as symlinks wouldn't be any better, i'm afraid.

 >> in favor of having only one script named "altpdf", which will
 >> accept the "engine" as it's first argument? E.g. instead of

 GW> The problem with that approach is that altpdftex and friends are
 GW> meant to be a direct replacement for pdftex and friends.

 GW> Hence, you can run pdflatex foo and altpdflatex foo

 GW> and get the same result only via tex+dvips+distiller.

Hey, what's hard in running "altpdf latex foo" instead of
"altpdflatex foo"?

 >> altpdflambda [options and parameters]
 >> 
 >> you would use
 >> 
 >> altpdf lambda [options and parameters]
 >> 
 >> and similar for all other altpdf* scripts.

 GW> That is nice too and it is indeed a better interface.

 GW> However, I would like to follow whatever TeX does. If all of TeX
 GW> changes to

 GW>     pdfetex lambda ....

 GW> I will too ;-)

1) You have altpdfcont-en. Do you have cont-en binary? ;-)

2) Why you added only a few altpdf* scripts? A lot of them are
   missing! Then add a few more dozens of them for all other formats. ;-)

So just get rid of this silliness, and use just one altpdf script. :-)

Best,
v.