Bug#223283: tetex-base: pdftex does not use /etc/papersize
Dylan Thurston <dpt@lotus.bostoncoop.net> schrieb:
> Package: tetex-base
> Version: 2.0.2-5.1
> Severity: wishlist
>
> It would be great if pdftex would use /etc/papersize, rather than
> assuming that everyone wants A4 paper...
Yes, it would. However, this is hard to achieve, because pdftex uses a
completely different mechanism: The default paper dimensions are read
from /etc/texmf/pdftex/pdftex.cfg.
Even if we would parse /etc/papersize when tetex-base is configured and
translate the setting there into the lengths for pdftex.cfg it wouldn't
work as expected: If one changes /etc/papersize afterwards, how should
tetex know that now pdftex.cfg has to be re-generated?
On the other hand, pdftex cannot be changed to look into /etc/papersize
itself, because it usually won't find it. I doubt wether other Linux
distributions use such a file, not to speak about other Unices, Windows
or Mac OS.
So the only thing one could do is to provide a generic interface by
which Debian programs or packages can register to be notified of a
change in /etc/papersize. The best would probably be to be able to
register scripts to be run every time paperconfig is run.
If you think this is important enough, we should contact the libpaperg
maintainer.
Bye, Frank
P.S. It just occurs to me that there's yet another possibility: We could
write a wrapper script around pdftex that would check wether
/etc/papersize is newer than pdftex.cfg and regenerates it if
needed. However, this would be run unnecessarily 99% of the time (or
even more). I don't like this solution.
--
Frank Küster, Biozentrum der Univ. Basel
Abt. Biophysikalische Chemie
Reply to: