[tex-live] TL and win32

[David Kastrup]

karl at freefriends.org (Karl Berry) writes:

>     I've succeded to compile all on my RH9 (hacking fontconfig.h :).
>
> Great, although if the tug binaries are "old" enough, maybe this is
> something we can take off your plate?  I guess we'll see.  Or if you
> just want to upload yours, I don't mind.
>
> Major congratulations and thanks on uploading the Windows stuff.  That
> is such a massive undertaking.
>
>
>     parse_first_line = f 
>     to
>     parse_first_line = t
>
> Well, I don't mind.  I doubt DEK would, either.  I see I made the change
> back in June, I think just because of some offhand comments on the list
> that it would be nice to have a pure Knuthian TeX again, as far as I can
> tell.  I am a bit surprised that you think many users of "tex" would
> notice?

Question here: how does this actually work in all detail?

If I write

pdflatex '&xmltex' file_name

then file_name is interpreted according to catcodes and active
character definitions established by the XMLTeX format.

How does this actually work in all of those cases?

a) &xmltex on command line (ok, I know that: file name interpreted
   according to TeX rules established by format).
b) -fmtname xmltex on command line
c) symbolic link xmltex to pdflatex (or pdfetex)
d,e,f) any of the above, but with a %&xmltex first line?

Note that a) is the Knuthian decreed default behavior, and all of the
rest are kpathsea/web2c inventions.


-- 
David Kastrup