[tex-live] Re: pdfeTeX as the only engine

[Staszek Wawrykiewicz]

On Wed, 14 Jan 2004, Hans Hagen wrote:

> > > If the output mode is dumped in the format, why not remove it from the
> > > .cfg file and put it in the .ini file. This way latex.fmt would set
> > > output mode to 0 and pdflatex to 1 ... ?
> >
> >It would be the best solution which can retain simple linking
> >latex->pdfetex,
> >I think that output mode=0 should also ignore reading .cfg file at all.
> >At the moment there is no command line for output format or switching to
> >another config file...
> 
> i'm not sure about that, since it may concern (future) settings with 
> regards to protruding and so

Ahhh! I asked several times how that protrusion can be used. Martin 
told me that only Hans could answer... ;-}
The most strange thing is that pdftex.cfg is even needed for 
generating the format. For what damn reason?
I recall that Pawel Jackowski reported that many times: he wanted to build
any special XXX.efmt, but failed since pdftex.cfg was not found.
It is not so easy to build just latex.efmt with pdfetex engine. Even
after puting in latex.ini \pdfoutput=0, fmtutil run still tries to load
pdftex.cfg. So actually we can switch to the DVI output _only_
in the input file.
Please consider that transition to pdfetex as the default engine
should be easy and transparent for the BLU user, so any playing with
command line etc. would be hardly acceptable. Sight.

-- 
Staszek Wawrykiewicz
StaW at gust.org.pl