[OS X TeX] Building new formats (MacTeX)

[Gerben Wierda]

On Sep 13, 2006, at 01:58, Rowland McDonnell wrote:

> So I've got a TeX installation that I can use to pdfLaTeX documents. But
I'm still using the supplied formats, which have a lot of built-in
hyphenation patterns but not the one I need (UK English).
> I was thinking about modifying the Babel setup so that I could have the
existing languages plus the one I need, with the one I need set up as
the default.
> I see that to do this, I need to edit the appropriate language.dat  file.
> I'm told that I should use kpsewhich to find out which language.dat  file
> is the one that'll be used by iniTeX when I build my new formats.  To  do
> that, I need to find out which --format option to pass to kpsewhich so
that it'll look in only the places that iniTeX is going to search, but 
I
> can't find anything at all to help me figure that one out.
> I've no idea where to start looking - can anyone help me find out how  to
> invoke kpsewhich for this job?
> (the kpathsea documentation didn't help, and the TeXShop documentation,
which does explain a little about building new formats, didn't help
either.  I can't find any MacTeX documentation at all to speak of.  The
Babel documentation doesn't help.  The kpsewhich manpage doesn't help. A
few other things don't help either - point being, I've read quite a lot
of docs and drawn a blank)

Here's a way:

1. open the TeX i-Package with i-Installer
2. Select "configure only"
3. Select no if offered the choice to remove the ConTeXt in texmf.local 4.
Update the i-Package if asked to. Authenticate
5. A couple of sanity checks (on maps for instance) will follow and  also
some of your Mac Fonts will be converted to types that can be used  by TeX
(using the gtamacfonts package for LaTeX and ConTeXt)
6. Say no to the question if you want to (re)create the Latin Modern  GUI
versions (or yes, it is just a different part of configuration) 7. In the
"Configure what?" panel select Languages and and Formats  Creation and
deselect all others.
8. In the "Select languages for LaTeX" panel select british. Do not 
deselect US English or no hyphenation, some packages expect these to be 
available always. Choose "select". The language.dat you have changed  now
lives in texmf.local.

All your formats (as defined in fmtutil.cnf) are recreated. You map  files
are also recreated to make sure your maps reflect your settings  (no
settings have changed by the i-Package so you'll get the same maps 
again).

9. Select "Yes" on the question if you want to be beckwards compatible  in
your CLI.

G




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