Re: [NTG-context] Gamma support in TeXExec?

[Hans Hagen <pragma@wxs.nl>]

At 11:19 PM 10/21/2002 +0200, Olaf Weber wrote:
>Hans Hagen writes:
> > At 08:40 PM 10/20/2002 +0200, Olaf Weber wrote:
> >> Hans Hagen writes:
>
> >>> personally i think that gamma should just use a cont-* file, but with
> >>> an ofmt extension; where etex can be distinguished by suffix, omega
> >>> cannot, which is a bad thing since now one gets format clashes;
>
> >> This is an interesting idea, and one I'd be willing to impose on Omega.
>
> > Thanks! It would help a lot.
>
>Still, for my peace of mind I'd like to know a bit more of the
>background, and why getting Omega to use a different suffix will help
>so much.  (And does this mean that pdftex and pdfetex should be
>modified as well?)

it would make sense to give pdftex/pdfetex other extensions as well, just 
for the sake of consistency

on the other hand, a user can generate a cont-en.efmt file with pdfetex 
which is compatible with cont-en.efmt by etex apart from the pdf support, 
simply because pdftex is an extension [in the same way, etex is compatible 
and could have the same suffix, unless in non compatible ** mode]

omega is different and not compatible (and not that stable either), and so 
users would like to use their macro packages (+formats) for both systems, 
so having an cont-en.efmt for pdfetex alongside cont-en.oft for omega is a 
good solution or that, in that case

texexec --program=omega yourfile

would launch omega and omega would look for the oft file itself (users 
nowadays are not that aware of formats and asking them to generate them ...)

so, to be perfect it should be:

tex     -> fmt
etec    -> efmt (already)
pdftex  -> pft
pdfetex -> epmt
omega   -> oft
eomega  -> eoft
nts     -> nfmt (already)

but since pdftex is compatible is less urgent

an alternative is:

web2c/pdftex/pdftex.fmt
web2c/pdftex/pdfetex.fmt

etc

Sorry for the mess, but solutions like pdflatex versus latex versus tex 
makes users think that they are all different tex's while it's the same 
program with different macros, and pdflatex/latex is actually the same 
thing apart from the backend. For context, i would prefer to keep cont-en 
as the one and only name for the english interface version, independent of 
the texprogram used


Hans


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                                   Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE | pragma@wxs.nl
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