Re: Saving space...

On Sun, Apr 13, 2003 at 09:51:44PM +0200, David Kastrup wrote:
> 
> 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

While that's a sensible idea and worth implementing, it's also
important to realise that that's not the major reason for teTeX's
large size, and will probably not be particularly significant in the
increasing size in the coming months and years either: the macro
packages are the primary reason for the growth AFAICT.  Maybe there
needs to be some sort of effort by someone to have a way of splitting
up teTeX meaningfully into tetex-core, tetex-normal and tetex-extra or
something like that.  I mean, eventually the whole of the CTAN macros
directory could end up in teTeX....

Have a nice day!

   Julian

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