[tex-live] Hook in kpathsea for files not found?

[Dr. Werner Fink]

On Thu, Feb 21, 2013 at 03:15:55PM +0100, Zdenek Wagner wrote:
> 2013/2/21 Dr. Werner Fink <werner at suse.de>:
> > Hi,
> >
> > as I've been asked from users if it is possible to provide a message for
> > each file not found, I'd like to asked for a feature in the kpathsea library.
> >
> > Such a feature may provide the possibility to show messages how to install a
> > missed package like texlive-colortab or a virtual dependency like
> > `tex(colortab.sty)' and how to install them.  This would be useful for TeXLive
> > upstream as well as for distributions providing TeXLive packages[1,2].
> >
> I am afraid it will not be useful at all. Kpathsea looks at too many
> places. Moreover, it may be instructed to look into the ls-R files and
> not to the tree, thus a failure to find the file in ls-R will not tell
> you which directory could contain the file. If you want to install the
> package not existing in the TeX Live, you may wish to put it to
> texmf-local. You should know TDS and structure the package that way.
> Now the question is how to find texmf-local. It is simple:
> 
> kpsewhich --var-value TEXMFLOCAL
> 
> Similarly
> 
> kpsewhich --var-value TEXMF
> 
> will give you the list of all TEXMF trees.
> 
> You can also use --show-path option to see where a specified file type
> is expected. And kpsewhich <filename> will tell you whether the file
> will be found.

This is not my task.  I'm asking for the possibility as package maintainer
of TeXLive here at openSUSE to be able to provide the users a hint how to
install a texlive package which provides a missing font/style/class and
was build for openSUSE.

> > [1] https://aspratyush.wordpress.com/2012/12/
> > [2] http://jaegerandi.blogspot.de/2012/12/easy-way-to-install-tex-packages-for.html

>From [1] I guess that Jindrich Novyc from the Fedora project may have
a similar wish ;)

  Werner

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