>> If interested http://www.crufty.net/ftp/pub/unix/configs/etc/ has copies
>> of a decent? /etc/profile and ksh.* which I've used on lots of flavours
>> of unix.
>
>In my humble opinion, these configuration files are too complex and
>too large.  These files can be exported from a centralized filesystem

Possibly.   But they've worked well for the last 15-20 years.

>(e.g., by NFS) to a large number of clients running different Unix
>and BSD flavours.  On the wrong side, these files are difficult to
>maintain and, probably, a bit slow when users log in to the system.

>case $- in
>*i*)	# do things for interactive shell

I use this in ksh.* since ksh is known to support it
but my /etc/profile works with pretty well any bourne shell,
So makes as few assumption as possible.

I also much prefer writing a portable script, than N different
versions of the same one - much harder to maintain.
But yes I do make use of the . file.<subtype> model.

--sjg