Re: Removal of initex?

On Mon, Nov 14, 2005 at 07:44:57PM +0100, Thomas Esser wrote:
> > 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

That makes sense, thanks!  I'll forward this to the relevant Debian
bugs.

   Julian