[OS X TeX] pdflatex.fmt format file missing

[Martin Costabel]

Robert Morelli wrote:
[]
> A systemwide search reveals that pdflatex.fmt is missing, but 

Have you looked in places like ~/.texmf-var/web2c/ ?
Did you use commands like

   kpsewhere pdflatex.fmt

? In my case, this shows two hits

/Users/costabel/.texmf-var/web2c/pdflatex.fmt
/sw/var/lib/texmf/web2c/pdflatex.fmt

 > pdflatex.ini is present in directory
 > /sw/share/texmf-dist/tex/latex/config/pdflatex.ini

This looks right. And the pdflatex.fmt should, of course, have been 
created automatically right during installation of the tetex-base package.

[]
> No effect.
> 
> What's puzzling me most about this situation is that no one else is 
> aware of it. I was under the impression that

Because no one else is having this problem?

> tetex was a pretty standard tex distribution for OS X and that pdflatex 
> was a pretty commonplace use of a
> tex system. Am I wrong, or is tex just not used that much on OS X?

You are wrong concerning tex on OSX, as you can see from the other 
reactions. But even concerning Fink's tetex, you are wrong. I am using 
it every day for my work, and I know quite a few colleagues who are 
using it as well. One reason why it is not so much discussed here is 
precisely that it has not been updated for quite a while and therefore 
just works as it has been working before.

To debug why it does not work for you, you could look at the output of

   fmtutil --byfmt pdflatex

and see what errors there are.

-- 
Martin



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