[tex-k] web2c-7.5.4, tetex-2.99.10-beta -- patches and problem

[Thomas Esser]

> >I'd like to stress again that the system trees must under no circumstances
> >shadow files in TEXMFHOME.

Trees like TEXMFLOCAL and TEXMFDIST have a lower precedence than
TEXMFHOME, that's no question.

The trees with a higher precedence than TEXMFHOME are to be used for
pool files, generated map files, format files etc. If people have files
like this in their TEXMFHOME, they should set TEXMFVAR=$TEXMFHOME and
TEXMFCONFIG=$TEXMFHOME. Then, the other trees will no longer shadow the
user's files, because these settings give ~/texmf the highest possible
precedence (via TEXMFCONFIG). That way, these people can even use
texconfig / fmtutil / updmap.

Giving TEXMFCONFIG and TEXMFVAR the highest precedence is the only way
to ensure that texconfig / fmtutil / updmap don't write files that are
shadowed by other files. 

Section 2.2 of TETEXDOC has a short discription about the new concept
of teTeX's predefined texmf trees. Not every tree is ment for all kind
of data. Section 4.4 explains the concept of the "write pointers"
TEXMFCONFIG and TEXMFVAR.

The main reason to make this rearrangement and to enforce a little
structure about what goes into which texmf tree comes from the
fact that texconfig / fmtutil / updmap no longer edit files "in
place". E.g. if you use "texconfig hyphen latex" then the language.dat
files is no longer edited where it was found (except that it already
exists in TEXMFCONFIG/tex/generic/config), but the modified copy is
stored in TEXMFCONFIG/tex/generic/config. It was a design goal to make
the directories configurable where my tools write their data to and to
make it all *explicit* (e.g. the old updmap has stored the map files in
the same tree where the updmap.cfg file was found. Sounds nice and right,
but you cannot avoid that updmap writes into TEXMFDIST this way).

So, I can only assure that I have spend days (really days, not hours) to
come to this setup. I won't change it. All I could accept are suggestions
for better documentation.

Thomas