[tex-live] Kpathsea in TL2007

Zdenek Wagner zdenek.wagner at gmail.com
Sat Feb 17 18:21:40 CET 2007


2007/2/17, Heiko Oberdiek <oberdiek at uni-freiburg.de>:
> On Sat, Feb 17, 2007 at 05:19:53PM +0100, Zdenek Wagner wrote:
>
> > 2007/2/17, Heiko Oberdiek <oberdiek at uni-freiburg.de>:
> > >On Sat, Feb 17, 2007 at 10:09:57AM +0000, Philip & Le Khanh wrote:
> > >
> > >> Akira Kakuto wrote:
> > >> >
> > >> >I forgot to write about a small difference between
> > >> >Windows and other systems concerning the order of
> > >> >file search.
> > >> >
> > >> >[1] Windows
> > >> >    (a) \input foo
> > >> >        try foo.tex first, if not found then try foo
> > >> >
> > >> >[2] Other systems
> > >>
> > >> >    (c) \input foo.bar
> > >> >        try foo.bar.tex first, if not found then try foo.bar
> > >>
> > >> The behaviour as described for Windows seems logical (indeed,
> > >> required) to me : imagine one has
> > >>
> > >>       \input letter-spacing.sty
> > >>
> > >> then surely one would want letter-spacing.sty to be
> > >> loaded, and not letter-spacing.sty.tex, even if the
> > >> latter existed.
> > >
> > >But (a) prevents that "foo" can be loaded if
> > >both "foo" and "foo.tex" exist. :-(
> > >
> > >Therefore I prefer a new \input primitive that uses
> > >curly braces (such as \pdfximage) without default
> > >extension. Then it would be possible to reliable
> > >address each file name (including spaces, quotes, ...)
> > >
> > It is not a good idea because \input{foo} is a LaTeX macro and assumes
> > to load foo.tex if it exists. It can make things confusing.
>
> No, it isn't, I said a *new* primitive, of course with a new name, e.g.
> \inputfile, \pdfinput, ... or whatever name.
> Also the existence of this new primitive can be tested in a reliable way.
> Thus the compatibiliy isn't violated and new macro code can use
> the new primitives. It reduces confusion because nobody must
> guess which file names can be detected and which files are loaded.
> (Also new primitives for \openin/\openout are needed.)
>
OK. I think that there are already  extensions in some distributions
mainly for handling file names with spaces. New set of primitives with
new names will provide portable solution.

> Yours sincerely
>   Heiko <oberdiek at uni-freiburg.de>
>


-- 
Zdeněk Wagner
http://hroch486.icpf.cas.cz/wagner/
http://icebearsoft.euweb.cz


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