[tex-live] Re: [tex-k] TeX finding filenames with spaces

[Staszek Wawrykiewicz]

On Tue, 13 Jan 2004, Thomas Esser wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 13, 2004 at 02:04:10PM +0000, Sebastian Rahtz wrote:
> > Don't panic yet. pdftex emits DVI as well as PDF, no problem. If you remake
> > all the symlinks to point to "pdfetex" instead of "tex", and remake 
> > format files,
> 
> Why fiddle around with symlinks? Just replace tex, etex and pdftex by
> pdfetex in the fmtutil configuration:
>    fmtutil --edit; fmtutil --all; texlinks -m

As I can see, this thread has been messed to both mailing lists...
1. (about the above) just only "very" short notes:
   a) even having \pdfoutput=0 in the .ini file for XXX format generation,
      pdf(e)tex still reads pdftex.cfg with output_format 1, so pdf
      is forced anyway. In consequence, all users have to include
      the proper command to all their existing input files. Objection!
   b) for many users pdf as default output is not needed at all!
      they still need reliable output in dvi/ps which can simply crash
      in the pdf way (not to mention professional usage -- playing
      with color separations, transformations, etc). Sorry, but PS has 
      better defined definition than pdf, which is still in turn 
      of changing.
   c) I'm not against changing the main engine to pdfetex for all formats
      provided that _all_ can use it as replacement of the TeX engine, 
      not only us, developers.
   d) TeX engine and Plain should be also kept on TL.
   e) I know the ideas expressed by Fabrice and Seb, but I think
      that we still should provide all that metafont mess which you hate.
      Otherwise, we have to change 'TeX Live' name to 'PDFeTeX Live' ;-}

2. (about filenames with spaces, as in Subject): in my thoughts it's 
   really good time to fix that in one way for _all_ distributions. 
   I'm only affraid about " as active character in many packages, like 
   German, and all output from TeX (\jobname, index, bibtex, html etc.). 
   Please do not consider only output from latex, which can be redefined 
   like \input.

-- 
Staszek Wawrykiewicz
StaW at gust.org.pl