[tex-live] texmf.cnf: Why "Part 4: extra format definitions for TeX Live"?

Reinhard Kotucha reinhard.kotucha at web.de
Tue Apr 10 21:48:41 CEST 2007


>>>>> Frank Küster <frank at kuesterei.ch> writes:

  > Either the comment should be changed, or the variables can be
  > dropped; or we opt to keep them to keep the differences between
  > texmf.cnf and texmf.cnf-4WIN as small as possible.

It's best to keep the differences as small as possible.  Maybe we can
find a way to generate both files fom a single source.  It is quite
hard to maintain the files separately.  Most variables are set
identically on both systems and if something is changed in the UNIX
version it can happen that Staszek does not notice the change.  And if
the files are too different, diff will produce too much output and
possibly bugs are overlooked.

I wrote a little script last year which derived texmf.cnf-4WIN from
texmf.cnf, but it turned out to be useless because it only changed
values of variables but it did not allow to add new variables or
change comments.  There is still a lot of time until TL-2008 is
released and I'll certainly look for a better solution.  What I think
is most reasonable is a LaTeX-like approach (dtx files).  I like the
dtx files because nothing is duplicated and you see what goes into
which file.  It even allows to provide two config files for Windows,
one for a local installation and one for a network installation.  It's
not very difficult to implement something like that in Perl.

At the moment it's best not to remove Windows stuff from texmf.cnf.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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