[tex-live] initex '&FORMAT' with whizzytex

[Stefano Lodi]

Olaf Weber wrote:

>Stefano Lodi writes:
>
>  
>
>>Thanks Olaf.  Initex is linked to  tex.  But if  I write
>>$ tex '&latex' dummy.tex
>>    
>>
>
>The question is not what initex is linked to, but what latex is linked
>to.  You need to use etex.
>
>  
>
>>The error message is still  there. Perhaps &-line parsing should be
>>disabled?  I'm just guessing.
>>    
>>
>
>  
>
>>This is TeXk, Version 3.141592 (Web2C 7.5.2)
>> %&-line parsing enabled.
>> (/KNOPPIX/usr/local/TeX/texmf/web2c/cp8bit.tcx)
>>kpathsea: Running mktexfmt latex.fmt
>>running `etex -ini   -jobname=latex -progname=latex *latex.ini' ...
>>This is e-TeXk, Version 3.141592-2.1 (Web2C 7.5.2) (INITEX)
>>    
>>
>          ^^^^^^
>
>  
>
As to my last message, to be more precise it worked by configuring with

$ ./configure -initex einitex -fmt efmt

Then, in the checkconfig script: [ -f dummy.fmt ] should be changed to [ 
-f dummy.$FMT ].

Whizzytex is an Emacs minor mode for incremental viewing of LaTeX 
documents.  As to your question Karl, I am quoting the author of 
whizzytex, Didier Remy:

"WhizzyTeX spends all of its free time recompiling very small slices of 
yourdocument so it must do it very fast, really as fast as possible. 
Today's explosion of macro packages makes latex initialization process 
as slow as processing 10-20 pages of the document. For small documents 
of 1-3 pages, having precompiled a specialized format speeds up 
compilation of the document by a factor of 5-10."

I am also curious about the semantics of programs in tex-live.  I am not 
familiar with it and its history (indeed it's my first time with 
tex-live).  Why einitex has the same semantics initex used to have (so 
that one can type einitex '&latex' mymacros.tex), whereas initex itself 
now has a different semantics? I think this feature differs from most 
other implementations.


Thanks so much to both of you Karl and Olaf for helping me solve the issue.

-Stefano

-- 
Dr. Stefano Lodi                        home page: www-db.deis.unibo.it/~slodi
Dept. of Electr. C. Sc. & Systems          e-mail: slodi at deis.unibo.it
University of Bologna                         tel: +39-051-20(93560)
via Risorgimento 2                            fax: +39-051-20(93540)
I-40136 Bologna BO, Italy