[Tugindia] (no subject)

[David Kastrup]

"CV Radhakrishnan" <cvr at river-valley.org> writes:

> >>>>> "David" == David Kastrup <dak at gnu.org> writes:
> 
> [...]
> 
>     CVR> Move the resulting latex.fmt to the location where TeX looks
>     CVR> for formats, usually it is $TEXMF/web2c. Update your TeX's
>     CVR> file data base.
> 
>     David> Actually, you should not do that.  Read the licence.  It is
>     David> a bad idea if your version of LaTeX behaves incompatible
>     David> with everybody else's.  If you want to work with preloaded
>     David> material, you can use the mylatex.ltx file from David
>     David> Carlisle (instructions are in the file itself).
> 
> You're absolutely right, David.  However, people do it often,

An excellent reason to tell them why this is a bad idea.  Sure, "You
know why this can hurt?" is not the straight answer to "How can I
shoot myself in the foot?", but I take such liberties at times.

> especially in text processing houses, where they need LaTeX with a
> special format for a repetitive job (like academic journals).

Which is perfectly possible by using mylatex.ltx or other means to
dump your own format with a name of its own, without causing
unexpected incompatibilities when documents get moved in and out of
the house.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum