[tex-k] setting latex2.09

[Alex Degtyarev]

Hi everyone,

A friend of mine has to run latex 2.09 on a unix machine (without
root privilegies). It's summer time, so sysadmins are not available.
Once again, everything should be done within his home directory.
Also, it would be nice to retain 2e as well. The guy is computer
illiterate and I have no access to that machine :( So, I need to send
him step-by-step instructions. I browsed through the docs and figured
out more or less what he should do. Can anyone check/correct/complete
this?

Thanks in advance,
Alex

(1) unzip latex2.09 to a local dir, say, ~/latex209
(2) (temporarily) set TEXINPUTS to ~/latex209
(3) run initex lplain 
(4) place lplain.fmt to another local dir, say, ~/fmt
(5) make an executable link lplain to tex (do I take it right that
by default web2c will use the format whose name is the exe name?)
(6) edit startup files to set FMTDIR (to what? I want to retain the
default dirs as well, but in his current vars there's no FMTDIR) and
TEXINPUTS_lplain to ~/latex209:$(TEXITNPUTS)


Once again, any help will be greatly appreciated!