[tex-live] [patch] More consistent paper handling in texconfig

[Frank Küster]

karl at freefriends.org (Karl Berry) wrote:

> Hi Frank,
>
>     Attached is a patch that addresses this issue.  
>
> Thanks.  I will happily review/incorporate it in days to come?
>
> Did you do this because somebody actually wanted a default paper size
> other than letter|a4?  If so, I'm curious about their situation.

It's not so much "they", it's rather "it", Debian's libpaper.

There have been many requests by users to configure TeX's default paper
sizes automatically according to libpaper, which is supposed to be the
central place in Debian to specify which paper will be found in the
attached printer's main trays.  Of course, all people that actually
complained wanted to use letter (those that want a4 are, by chance,
happy with the default in Debian's TeXLive packages).

I don't know whether anyone actually uses other papers as default, but
libpaper supports many more:

$ paperconf -a | tr '\n' ','
a4,letter,note,legal,executive,halfletter,halfexecutive,11x17,
statement,folio,quarto,10x14,ledger,tabloid,a0,a1,a2,a3,a5,a6,
a7,a8,a9,a10,b0,b1,b2,b3,b4,b5,b6,b7,b8,b9,b10,c2,c3,c4,c5,c6,
c7,c8,DL,Comm10,Monarch,archE,archD,archC,archB,archA,flsa,flse,
csheet,dsheet,esheet

I don't plan to support all those.  But I'd rather support a couple more
than necessary, and never test the code for the error case in the real
world.  I know computers whose only attached local printer uses a3, and
of course a0 (but you wouldn't want to send quick test documents
there).  In a print-on-demand company, maybe the default size is
something special, too.

> There is also tlmgr paper letter :(.

There's no tlmgr in texlive, so I have no experience - what does it do?

Regards, Frank

-- 
Dr. Frank Küster
Debian Developer (TeXLive)
VCD Aschaffenburg-Miltenberg, ADFC Miltenberg
B90/Grüne KV Miltenberg