[OS X TeX] MacTeX 2007 new formats query

Rowland McDonnell rjmmnet-lists at yahoo.co.uk
Mon Feb 11 03:24:54 EST 2008


My latest adventure in setting up MacTeX 2007 revolves around format
files.

I need to create some new formats - particularly for XeLaTeX and
pdfLaTeX - that do not use Babel for different hyphenation patterns, but
instead use a local setup (\language=0 US English; \language=1 UK
English; \language=1 by default).

The method I'm trying to use - and I'd be happy to be told about a
better one - is as follows:

Creating the file rmlatex.ltx from latex.ltx by replacing the call to
hyphen.cfg with one to rmhyphen.cfg (my local hyphenation config file
that does the job I need).

Putting that file in /Users/Shared/texmf.rjmm/tex/latex/base

(/Users/Shared/texmf.rjmm is on a search path set in texmf.cnf).

Then I've taken copies of:

/usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf-dist/tex/latex/latexconfig/latex.ini 
/usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf-dist/tex/latex/latexconfig/xelatex.ini 
/usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf-dist/tex/latex/latexconfig/pdflatex.ini 

renamed them rmatex.ini, xermlatex.ini, pdfrmlatex.ini, and edited each
one to call rmlatex.ltx rather than latex.ltx.  These modified versions
are placed in /Users/Shared/texmf.rjmm/tex/latex/latexconfig.

I have then modified /usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf/web2c/fmtutil.cnf by
adding the following three lines (with some comments that don't matter
here):

rmlatex    pdftex language.dat -translate-file=cp227.tcx  *rmlatex.ini
pdfrmlatex pdftex language.dat -translate-file=cp227.tcx
*pdfrmlatex.ini

xelatex     xetex    language.dat    -etex  xermlatex.ini

(anomalous display above due to email line wrapping)

At this point, I'm not sure what I need to do next.

I have a note dating from when I set up MacTeX from 2006, which tells me
to use the following incantation:

sudo -sudo -H fmtutil-sys --all --cnffile
/Users/Shared/texmf.rjmm/web2c/fmtutil.cnf

But the TeXlive documentation says this:

"In particular, for multi-user systems, you will probably want to
pregenerate the standard formats with fmtutil-sys –missing. Otherwise,
each user will end up with their own formats.

Also, if you have a personally-modified copy of fmtutil.cnf or
updmap.cfg, instead of using the ones generated by installation, they
must be installed in the tree referenced by the variable
TEXMFSYSCONFIG."

I know that the documentation is wrong with what it says about
updmap.cfg - I put it in the specified place, and it got ignored.   I'm
doubtful of the accuracy of the TeXlive documentation when it comes to
fmtutil.cnf

So: does anyone have a suggestion on the best place to put my locally
modified fmtutil.cnf, and a suggestion on what command line incantation
I should use to build a new set of formats?

Rowland.



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