add jadetex/passivetex to texmf?

["Markus Hoenicka" <Markus dot Hoenicka at uth dot tmc dot edu>]

Hi,

I'm currently preparing about half a dozen packages for a Cygwin
SGMl/XML system. This was initiated and previously announced by Jon
Foster who will provide about as many packages as well.

To complete this system I'd like to add support for creating
Postscript and PDF files from the SGML/XML sources (*). For this to work
we'd need some more TeX macros which are currently not part of the
texmf packages: JadeTeX, xmltex, PassiveTeX. Unfortunately these
packages need not only be around, but it is necessary to build format
files from them, which in turn requires the correct settings in
texmf.cnf.

So my preferred way would be to just include these packages in
texmf-extra and adapt texmf.cnf accordingly (I can provide diffs for
this purpose). Providing them as extra package would require users
fiddling with texmf.cnf themselves which is prone to fail.

I would like to hear your opinions about this (Jan, art thou
listening?).

regards,
Markus

(*) For those not familiar with the SGML/XML stuff, this is how it
basically works:

           jade       jadetex     dvips
SGML source -> TeX file -> DVI file -> Postscript file

           jade       pdfjadetex
SGML source -> TeX file -> PDF file

        xsltproc    PassiveTeX
XML source -> FO file -> PDF file

-- 
Markus Hoenicka, PhD
UT Houston Medical School
Dept. of Integrative Biology and Pharmacology
6431 Fannin MSB4.114
Houston, TX 77030
(713) 500-6313, -7477
(713) 500-7444 (fax)
Markus.Hoenicka@uth.tmc.edu
http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/hoenicka_markus/