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              <LATEX-L@RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE>
Date:         Sun, 6 Oct 1996 21:43:03 +0200
From: Hans Aberg <haberg@MATEMATIK.SU.SE>
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???

  Actually, an idea that comes to my mind, is that a \NeedsPackage{}
function should contain information about a URL where the needed package
can be fetched.
  Thus, if you do not have the package available when compiling a document,
you would get an error message "This document needs the file foo, look at
URL bar", or something.
  This URL may then be document with information of where the file can be
found, as URL's may change more frequntly than the LaTeX distributed files.
  When compiling a file "foobar.tex", it could generate a file
"foobar.url", with the URL info, which then can be included with the
document distribution.
  Packages could also have distinctive names, that could be used in a
net-search, in case the URL has moved.

  -- Or something.

  Hans Aberg