[tex-live] tl-pretest: bug in .ini files

[Petr Olsak]

There is another aspect not discussed yet. If a user looks into an ini 
file and sees \input pdftexconfig then his/her first idea is: what this 
file does do? And he/she looks into pdftexconfig.tex. When the original 
format is here then avarage user needs two seconds to understand it 
because there are only nine clear and understandable lines. He/she can 
copy it to the working directory, modify values and re-generate format, 
for example. Or he/she can set these values in the document directly. We 
call this situation: "simplicity is power". On the other hand, if there is 
pdftexconfig.tex as suggested, average user is lost. He/she don't see the 
reading process of pdftexconfig.dat because this is not mentioned in .log 
nor on terminal when generating format.

I know many TeX users, I am consulting TeX problems on email continuosly 
(hundreds emails of this type per year), so I know, what avarage user is 
able to understand. And I know that there are many various methods of 
using pdfTeX, not only with eTeX enabled and with etex.src loaded. And, of 
course, not only LaTeX:).

I vote to keep simplicity, i.e. the pdftexconfig.tex can look like:

---------------------------------------------------------------

% pdftexconfig.tex

% Paper size: dimensions given in absolute terms
\pdfpageheight       = 297 true mm
\pdfpagewidth        = 210 true mm

% Enable PDF 1.5 output and thus more compression
\pdfminorversion     = 5
\pdfobjcompresslevel = 2

% Low-level settings unlikely ever to need to change
\pdfcompresslevel    = 9
\pdfdecimaldigits    = 3
\pdfpkresolution     = 600
\pdfhorigin          = 1 true in
\pdfvorigin          = 1 true in

--------------------------------------------------------------

Petr