Saving space...

Ok, here is a heretical proposal: recently I have been talking with
Klaus Knopper of Knoppix fame and mentioned that teTeX-2.0 was out.
Klaus is a TeX guy, but he was not too enthused because for everything
that takes up more space than before, something other in Knoppix has
to go (there is only so much space on one CD).  While less severe,
other distributions have the same kind of problems.

Just right now it hit me: the default teTeX compilation is _not_ there
for the select few that diddle around with the Web sources and try
slamming Knuth for some dollars.  Those will be comfortable with
generating executables of their own choice.  So what keeps us from
scrapping every executable and corresponding pool files and stuff
except PDFeTeX (apart from Omega...)?  Correct me if I am mistaken,
but for all practical purposes it can, with support from a sensible
version of files like graphics.cfg, double as PDFTeX, eTeX and TeX,
generating either PDF or DVI output depending on how it is called.  It
should not even be necessary to dump different formats for what will
then be called `pdfelatex', `pdflatex', `elatex' and `latex', at least
when some slight parsing of configuration files adds initial settings
for \pdfoutput (I would not even bother to switch off eTeX features
when the executables without an explicit `e' get called), and similar
savings would be achieved for other formats such as plain.  Of course,
`tex' would no longer give the _pristine_ Knuth TeX, but it would not
claim to do that in its banner, and unless I am mistaken, that would
be all that it shouldn't do.  It is the name of the program as
announced in the banner, and not that of the executable, that is
subject to trademark if I am not mistaken.

For the people that really must, there could be special all/install
targets in the Makefile that made all the other executables, formats
and pool files, but as a default, it seems really wasteful.

It should be possible to cut the number of actually installed formats
and pool files and executables to a quarter in that manner, and in
addition avoid a lot of confusion about "why is my TeX lacking this or
that functionality some package wants?".  The stability of PDFeTeX in
the legacy modes should be sufficient for operation, unless I am very
much mistaken.  While it might be nice to replace it at one time with
PDFeOmega, I feel that the time of _that_ executable to replace all
the rest lies definitely not in the close future.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum