Re: ConTeXt on Debian: The wiki entry

["Frank Küster" <frank@kuesterei.ch>]

Taco Hoekwater <taco@elvenkind.com> wrote:

> Hi Frank,
>
> Frank Küster wrote:
>> 
>> Are some of the people around who wrote this?  I found some information
>
> I do not use Debian and did not write that page, but I can answer your
> questions partially, at least.

Thank you - yes, this helps.

>> - Is it intended that context formats end up in $TEXMF/web2c/pdfetex/?
>>   If yes, why is that so?  If not, we should rather find out why it
>>   happens and fix it.
>
> Yes, it is. ConTeXt does not support only pdfetex, but all major
> engines, like XeTeX and Aleph. I have formats in:
> 	
>    $TEXMF/web2c/aleph/
>    $TEXMF/web2c/luatex/
>    $TEXMF/web2c/pdfetex/
>    $TEXMF/web2c/xetex/

Ah, okay, that's clear.  Has this already been this way one year ago
when texlive2005 was released?  Do you know whether the TeXlive
developers are aware of that?

>> - Why does it make a difference if the formats are created by fmtutil
>>   instead of texexec (Except for the output directory)?  Should the
>>   upstream packaging be changed so that fmtutil is never used, but
>>   texexec, or should fmtutil be fixed to produce the same as texexec?  
>
> It is almost certainly better to ignore/block fmtutil and use texexec
> instead. Properly setting up a ConTeXt update is not necesarily limited
> to format generation only.

Hm.  What are the other things that need to be done?

This is in fact an issue that affects not only Debian, but TeXlive and
probably most TeX distributions.  They currently assume that after an
update of some files and/or executables, it's sufficient to run mktexlsr
(possibly more than once), updmap(-sys) and "fmtutil(-sys) --all".  If
this is not sufficient for ConTeXt, there are two possibilities:

- fix fmtutil and updmap so that they do the right thing for ConTeXt

- or implement a way to automate calling texexec.  This would include
  using some configuration file, since not everybody who has aleph or
  xetex installed also wants a context format for this engine.

To me, as a TeXlive and teTeX guy, it seems preferrable to choose option
1 and fix the existing distribution scripts.  However, I don't know yet
what else is needed when ConTeXt is updated, therefore I might be wrong,
and switching to texexec might actually be better.  But then this should
be done consistently, and fmtutil should drop context handling
completely (or just call texexec).

Regards, Frank
-- 
Dr. Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)