[Cjk] Re: CJKTeX, Debian and other matters

[Otfried Cheong]

 > The crucial question is how to distinguish source file from the shadow
 > file. At present the files processed by LaTeX have `cjk' extension and
 > the ones edited by user have `tex' extension. I think this should be
 > the other way round. However, to preserve the meaning of legacy *.cjk
 > files, I propose to introduce a new extension `kjc' for the files
 > edited by users (then the shadow? source? files can just use the
 > extension *.tex).

I have to disagree here.  Certainly, the 'tex' extension usually means
'a file to be processed by TeX/LaTeX/pdfTex/pdfLaTeX' (as you see,
it's not actually as unique as you make it sound).  However, the 'tex'
extension also means 'the source for the document'.  If I enter a
directory with lots of 'eps', 'aux', 'log', 'dvi', and 'ps' files,
I'll be looking for the 'tex' files to find the source to my
document.  Personally, I find the 'human' meaning of 'the source' far
more important than the 'computer' meaning of 'to be processed by
TeX'. In particular, if you turn 'kjc' into 'source' and 'tex'
into 'temporary file that can be deleted', we would have the situation
where in some directories the 'tex' file can be deleted to save space,
while in others deleting it would be disastrous.  From experience I
know that this would bite me sooner or later...

Regards,
 Otfried