Re: Setup files: processing and deployment

[Yves Forkl]

Hi Jeff,

thank you so much for your explanations concerning the processing of
setup files. In fact, as I had been using setup files modified by
someone else, I was a bit puzzled at first and it took me some time to
sort out how they work together.

By now I have managed to organize my setup files in a way that my Lout
document just needs to have a single @Include at the beginning (plus a
@Database instruction for my references) which will have Lout include
all the other setup files, that I have copied and then modified, like
you have recommended as good practice (following Section 4.1 of the
User's Guide).

Since I want to be able to reuse the same set of modified setup files
with different documents, I keep them in a "central" place, rather than
putting the setup files alongside with the document. So I use an
absolute path in the @Include instruction (a bit inconvenient, but as
you said there is no variable expansion available here, so it's OK).

So far this works for me, but I wish Lout was a bit more modular in its
setup files. For a "book" type document, I had to copy and modify 2 of
Lout's include files and 3 of its database files, often just for a few
changes like differently localized terms. Keeping my version up to date
with future Lout releases will require me to carefully revise the whole
file. For instance, when I just want to modify the language-specific
words, it would be convenient if they were contained in a file of its
own rather than in standard.ld: the confines of my changes would then be
easier to locate, and standard.ld would not have to change. (However, I 
would need to copy it so that I can have it include my copy of the file 
with language-specific words.)

But all in all, Lout's setup files are fine the way they work.

   Yves