[pdftex] Pdftex advocacy and Pdfpages ?

[Michael Chapman]

I use Pdf TeX on a network. All machines have 'out of the box pdf TeX' (on 
Linux). Most are fairly disastrous 'as installed' because of limited package 
availability and on at least one machine a total absence of fonts. 
Practically this is of no importance because I just network through to the 
one machine with a cared for installation on it.

The one thing that works easily on 'local' machines is pdfpages. It is also 
one thing that is very useful for tidying up files, getting printing to work 
properly, and all.

It struck me (and thus probably has struck others long before ...) that if 
one wanted to increase the user base for pdf TeX, then some slimmed down 
version that offered pdfpages as the main/only feature might have find a 
great niche (and lead a significant minority onto the full distribution).

I'm not aware of competitor products (other than Adobe) but presume there 
must be some. Certainly though if my own printers had some such software it 
would have saved me many kilometres of to-and-fro for minor moving of entire 
'pages' around on the paper.

Just a thought,
	Michael Chapman