Bug#225833: Letter vs A4 again

[Greg Stark <gsstark@mit.edu>]

Norbert Preining <preining@logic.at> writes:

> There is NO NO NO reasonable default. Get it. I create on a daily basis
> documents which are not A4, although my papersize is A4. B4, Crown,
> whatever you want. There is no default. There is no default. There is no
> default.  Maybe for such simple systems as
> man it may be easy and useful. But not for TeX.

This is not an uncommon rhetorical technique and I admit I've even engaged in
it myself at times, sometimes without even realizing it. But it's not a valid
argument. If you think the user should always specify a paper size then it
should be an error not to specify one, not have a default that doesn't work
properly.

The status quo is that the Tex tools, like virtually every other program out
there defaults to one of A4 or Letter unless you specify something else. For
most users that default is all they need and works properly on every TeX
installation they use and they never bother to specify it specifically in each
document unless they're using an unusual size.

You're arguing that nobody should be using this feature and therefore it
doesn't matter whether it works correctly. But that's bogus. People do use it
and write documents on other systems that work fine only to be flummoxed when
their Debian system doesn't work as expected.


-- 
greg