Fatal Format Error

[Sebastian Rahtz]

James Thompson writes:
 > Currently the solaris and linux binaries are both happy with the .fmt
 > files in texmf/web2c/*.fmt which originally came from the teTeX distro.  
 > The fpTeX binaries however give
 > 
 > (Fatal format file error; I'm stymied)
 > 
 > If I build the format files via fpTeX's initex then fpTeX binaries work
 > but the solaris/linux binaries start giving the same error.
 > 
 > Can these files not be shared?  And if not then how can I get the distro's
 > to look at different copies of fmt files?

yes, they can be shared, *if* they come from the same source. fpTeX
has slightly revised sources. i suspect that is your problem.

 > PS If anyone is currently sharing a texmf tree between teTeX and fpTeX I'd
 > appreciate it if you could give me any pointers on how you did
 > it.  Thanks.

So far as I know, the only reliable way to mix fpTeX with a Linux/Unix
system is if you use the TeX Live 5 distribution [1], which has a shared
source. That would mean rebuilding the Unix sources, using
http://sun2.dante.de/Master/source/source.tar.gz. 

sebastian

[1] http://www.tug.org/texlive/. um, er, not yet available, unless you 
want to burn yourself a beta CD. if so, contact me.