>> On Fri, 18 Apr 2003 12:09:38 +0100,
>> Mark Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said:
> Sorry, I wasn't clear. The current handling of texmf.cnf looks
> reasonably sane to me - it's now not too dissimilar to how
> /etc/modules.conf is handled. What I was trying to say was that in
> the past there were problems with the handling of some
> configuration files in the tetex packages but that languages.dat
> hadn't really registered as one that needed special treatment.
Personally, I feel that one suboptimal design does not jsutify
another; since both add to the cases that break the nice invariant
that the admin may modify any file in /etc, and we do not mandate how
the files are modified (if we can madate how conffiles may be
modified, I would like to outlaw vim and mandate the one true editor
to be used for all packages ;-) ;-)
I strongly believe that the properties that all configuration
files reside in /etc, and that the admin may edit any of these files
at will (no linux conf, etc, and a required intermediary) were the
one of the stronger attractions of Debian; and now these invariants
are slowly being snipped away by the restrictions on modification of
these files.
We may already be on the slippery slope, but we should not
use that fact to accelerate our slide.
manoj
--
Blore's Razor: Given a choice between two theories, take the one which
is funnier.
Manoj Srivastava <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/>
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