[pdftex] Acrobat reader presets.

[Andreas Matthias]

John Culleton wrote:

> On Wednesday 23 April 2003 06:30 pm, Andreas Matthias wrote:
>> John Culleton wrote:
>>> As it happens, I am not using plain tex but pdftex or Context,
>>> depending on the task.
>> 
>> I am very sure that you are not able to use pdftex as it without
>> any macro package. And it seems that you don't even know the
>> difference. How about showing us a document of yours that runs
>> through `pdftex -ini'?
> 
> I run my documents with the command 
> 
> pdftex mydoc.tex

Thus you are using the plain TeX macro package -- unless you have a
very arcane TeX-Installation, but you don't have, believe me. And
it is quite easy to check this. Try

  pdftex -ini mydoc.tex

If this doesn't work than you are not use the pure pdftex binary
without a macro package.

> When one reads the Pdftex Manual, which describes the program I am
> using, it does not refer to "plain", or indeed to any separate format.

The pdftex manual just describes (some of) the pdftex primitives.
There is no need to describe macro packages in the pdftex manual,
since macro packages a documented elsewhere.

If you want to use pdftex without any macro package, you are just
allowed to do the following:

  * use pdftex primitives (described in the pdftex manual)
  * use TeX primitives (described in the TeXbook and marked with
    an asterisk)
  * run your document through `pdftex -ini'

> There is indeed a format called pdftex.fmt. But I execute the program
> pdftex which uses that format as a default. This format is not the same
> as plain tex. 

Have you ever created format files manually? Have you ever noticed
that you load plain.tex when creating pdftex.fmt? Since you know
that pdftex.fmt is used by default, you now know that you use
plain.tex by default, too.

> Much of the functionality of the old plain tex has been
> incorporated in the pdftex binary.

No, nothing.

> Since the binary progam name is pdftex and the format name is also
> pdftex and the manual refers only to pdftex what then should I call
> what I am using? I call it pdftex. Can you suggest a better name?

I never ever complaint that you are talking about pdftex. You
were the one who complaint when I said you used plain TeX. See
the first three articles in this thread.


Ciao
Andreas