[OS X TeX] Re: Interaction of plain TeX, \magnification, landscape and color

[Jonathan Kew]

On 20 Sep 2006, at 11:10 am, Bruno Voisin wrote:

> Just today I have received off-list a request for help from  
> somebody attempting to produce landscape color slides at  
> \magnification 2400, in plain TeX and using the miniltx interface  
> to the LaTeX graphicx and color packages (from /usr/local/teTeX/ 
> share/texmf.tetex/tex/plain/graphics/).
>
> I have obtained a working solution using dvips, but with pdfTeX I  
> keep getting an error when loading the color package:

> <snip>

> This may be caused by the fact that I have the LaTeX Updater i- 
> Package installed, so that the most recent LaTeX version in  
> texmf.local is used instead is the older one in texmf.tetex with  
> which miniltx has been designed to work.

This certainly sounds like a plausible explanation.

> Optimizations are also certainly to be looked for, so that  
> miniltx.tex and ifpdf.sty are only loaded once for example.
>
> I don't have time to look further into this, but I'm posting the  
> problem here in case people would be interested to investigate  
> further.

One fairly "quick and easy" test would be to temporarily rename  
texmf.local, so that it is not found and searched at all, and see if  
using the older latex from the texmf.tetex tree makes the problem go  
away.

> BTW, to Jonathan Kew: it appears in the log above, and I verified  
> using kpsewhich, that the version of graphics.cfg customized for  
> XeTeX is used when running pdfTeX:
>
> $ kpsewhich --progname=pdflatex graphics.cfg
> /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.tetex/tex/latex/graphics/graphics.cfg
> $ kpsewhich --progname=pdftex graphics.cfg
> /usr/local/teTeX/share/texmf.local/tex/xelatex/graphics/graphics.cfg

Yes; this happens because the TEXINPUTS path includes everything  
under texmf*/tex// as a "last resort"; and the .local tree takes  
precedence over the .tetex one. For pdflatex, the tex/latex subtree  
is explicitly included earlier, so that wins, but this doesn't apply  
to plain pdftex.

> I think it's harmless, given the customization only adds XeTeX to  
> the list of automatically recognized drivers but doesn't break  
> anything for pdfTeX and dvips. But should texmf.cnf be changed, or  
> the location of the modified graphics.cfg altered, in order for it  
> not to be found when running pdfTeX?

I think once the integration of xetex and supporting files into  
TL2006 is complete, so that the xetex .cfg files are in the main tree  
(rather than texmf.local, or its TL equivalent), this issue should go  
away. But as you say, it should be harmless in the meantime.

JK


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