TEXFORMATS = .;$TEXMF/web2c{/$engine,} Jonathan and I already made a similar change (for bases and mems too): .;$TEXMF/web2c/{$engine,} I guess your version avoids the recursive search, searching only the engine dir and the top-level dir. Hmm. That does seem better. I'll make that change unless some reason not to bubbles up ... Thanks, k