[tex-live] pretest: epstopdf overwrites existing files

[Heiko Oberdiek]

Hi Karl,

On Mon, Jul 06, 2009 at 06:57:26PM -0500, Karl Berry wrote:

>       \epstopdfsetup{suffix=-gen}
> 
> It worked for me.  Thanks so much.  Can you upload it to CTAN when you
> have a chance, barring further reports?  Thanks also for the doc updates.
> 
> In the TL graphics.cfg that I just committed, I used suffix=-epstopdf.
> That's annoyingly long, but seemed more explicit than -gen, which I
> could easily see people wondering about -- e.g., thinking generic or
> general instead of the intended "generated".

Suffix
------

Yes, a good name is difficult. Keep also in mind, that package
epstopdf could also be used for other programs and conversions,
e.g. gif -> png, the name result would be 
  (a) `foo-epstopdf.png'.
Perhaps 
  (b) `foo-generated.png' is more understandable.
Or
  (c) `foo.generated-from-gif.png', foo.generated-from-eps.pdf
Other variant:
  (d) `foo.converted-from-eps.pdf' or
  (e) `foo.eps-converted-to.pdf'

Because of (c) until (e) I have added \SourceExt to get the
name of the source extension without dot. With version 1.10:
  http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~oberdiek/tmp/epstopdf.pdf
you can write for example:
  \epstopdfsetup{suffix=\SourceExt-converted-to}
to get (e).

CTAN
----

Before uploading to CTAN, I want to solve three items:

(1) What's a good suffix?

(2) If there is an EPS file only, the situation is clear,
epstopdf would generate a pdf file (using suffix in name).
However, what is to do, if a PDF file exists (without suffix)?
Should it be used instead of generating a PDF file (with suffix)?
To solve this, I have added option `prefersuffix', that controls
the behaviour:
  prefersuffix=true ==> always use the generated name with suffix
  prefersuffix=false ==> use the file with name without suffix

(3) Default settings. Now, that files aren't overwritten, I think, I can
dare to change the default, e.g. to
  prepend,
  update,
  suffix=...,% [see (1)]
  prefersuffix=false

What do you think?

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