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

[Norbert Preining]

Hi Werner,

On Do, 21 Feb 2013, Dr. Werner Fink wrote:
> 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.

Do you want a hook into kpsewhich where you can plug in some other code,
or lets say at the end of the tex run a list of missing files?

I mean, TeX already tells you if a file is missing, what else is it
there?

I don't know about SuSE, but in Debian one could use the COntents file for
the respective archive and search for the file, and provide the correct
package name.

> 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].

There is some feature like that, and in principle one *could* implement
it already, as kpse lib calls mktex* scripts in case a file is not found
(if configured). THese scripts in turn *could* call tlmgr (on uptream TL)
or any other package manager to show a warning, or download the file
on the fly, or ...
http://tug.org/texinfohtml/kpathsea.html#mktex-scripts

THe mktextex script is disabled by default, but enabling it cold help.

Unfortunately, this will not help in all cases, I remember some LaTeX
\IfFileExists were problematics, but I cannot remember exactely.

Yeah, so in principle everything can be done with the mktex* scripts.

Does this help?

Norbert

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PREINING, Norbert                               http://www.preining.info
JAIST, Japan                                 TeX Live & Debian Developer
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