Message-ID:  <199610061528.QAA20490@vummath.ma.man.ac.uk>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project
              <LATEX-L@RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE>
In-Reply-To:  <199610061502.RAA01090@franc.daimi.aau.dk> (message from Soren
              Sandmann Pedersen on Sun, 6 Oct 1996 17:02:59 +0200)
Date:         Sun, 6 Oct 1996 16:28:23 +0100
From: David Carlisle <carlisle@MA.MAN.AC.UK>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project
              <LATEX-L@RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE>
To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L
              <LATEX-L@RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE>
Subject:      Re: General configuration of LaTeX
Status: R

Configuration....

There are arguments both for and against configuration.

The main argument against is that it makes document portatbility
much harder. For instance if there was a latex.cfg then people would
add things like a4 paper size, German.sty style easy "o umlauts,
and perhaps load graphics package or whatever.

This would mean that a document produced at that site would not run at
any other site. (Yes you could document what stuff was loaded locally,
but who reads documentation:-)

The graphics package configuration files are rather different, they
don't change (much) the top level user interface, they just change the
back end so that say a file produces on unix/dvips can run unchanged
on Mac/textures. So they *increase* rather than decrease document
portability.

Since this is latex-l list (for long term suggestions) it would be
possible to come up with a configuration scheme if a mechanism could
be devised such that a `portable' document could always be reliably
produced (by the system, not by the user). Any ideas???

David