The new distribution

[John Hillas]

I'm afraid that with the start of teaching I have not dared be
very adventurous with updating the last couple of weeks.  However
since Fabrice seems to be putting such an amount of work into 
making a beautiful distribution for us I've decided to share some 
comments anyway.

In earlier versions there have been two copies of pdftex.cfg
one in \texmf\pdftex\base and one in \texmf\pdftex\config.  And 
the files have been quite different.  Is this intentional?
It caused a certain amount of confusion to me a few weeks ago
when I couldn't work out why the changes to pdftex.cfg I was making
(to the one in ...\config) weren't having any effect.  Everything
worked well after I deleted the copy in \base.

I'm currently using pdftex 0.12r.  I've updated twice to 0.13 (once to 
b and once to c).  Both times I found that I got what were to me strange
results.  On using pdfscreen.sty (with the screen and sidebar options)
I had pdftex attempt to use pk fonts for *some* of the fonts (cmr10, 
but not cmr12, msam10, msbm10, and a few others).  As far as I can tell 
there is nothing wrong with my pdftex.cfg file or any of my .map files.  
Moreover when I replace *just* the binary files and the format files
by an older version (0.12r) everything works fine again.  And I haven't 
been able to generate the problem without using pdfscreen.  

The problem doesn't arise using 0.13b on a Linux system (though perhaps 
the Linux system is just set up better).

Can anyone replicate this problem with some 0.13 on win32?  Or have any 
suggestions as to what's going wrong?

Fabrice, is the intention to only distribute the executable installation
program?  And, if so what is the reasoning?  I've been very comfortable 
with the zipped files and would probably have tried the current 
distribution by now if it had been in that form.  As it is I'll wait until
I think I have a little free time before trying the installation program.
Is there something that needs an installation program, or is it just
to make things more convenient for users?  I recall there was some 
questions about registry entries a little while ago.  I suppose that
it might be a lot better to have the installation program making changes
to these if changes are needed.