Re: Removal of initex?

> Just a quick question: why is the initex symlink no longer installed?

To get the format right regarding search paths and array sizes, the
right --progname has to be used. And, even more, the format must be
build with the same engine that runs it (example: a "tex" based initex
will generate an unusable "latex" format, since latex is run with the
pdfetex engine). So by removing "initex", we have removed a common source
of problems.

People using a tetex based system should use fmtutil for all format
creations to avoid common problems.

> Unlike virtex, it is described several times in The TeXbook, so is a
> well-known interface, whereas tex -ini is far less so.  Any chance of
> reviving this (and the other *ini*) symlinks?

The initex stuff is marked as system dependent as far as I know. For
the reasons given above, I don't think that web2c or teTeX will revert
the symbolic links for initex.

Thomas