[pdftex] texi2dvi does not generate dvi on Debian Etch and MacOS X

[Anton Ertl]

Robin Fairbairns wrote:
> 
> Reinhard Kotucha <reinhard.kotucha at web.de> wrote:
> 
> > I just downloaded and compiled gforth, and indeed, it produces PDF.
> > The reason is that it is accompanied by an old version of
> > texinfo.tex.  If I remove it, a newer version I have on my system is
> > used and I get DVI output.
> > 
> > It doesn't work either,
> 
> how not?

My guess is that he worked with gforth-0.6.2, and the 4.9 texinfo.tex
finds some syntax error in it.  

However, the current development version of gforth works with that
texinfo.tex, so our problem is solved.

> one presumes that the gforth distributors are (buggily) distributing an
> archaic version of texinfo.  why they bother is an interesting question:
> who nowadays has tex without texinfo?

Hmm, good question.  My guess is that when we started including
texinfo.tex (in 1995), this was not the case.  It is probably no
longer sensible, especially since we call texi2dvi and other programs
from the texinfo distribution that we don't include.

Thanks everyone for their help.

- anton