tetex FC6

[Timothy Murphy]

François Patte wrote:

> as a TeX user I very puzzled using TeX/LaTeX under FC6:
> 
> 1- man is not up to date: it refers to initex (and some other init
> scripts for TeX which no longer exist...)

I think "tex --ini" is equivalent to the old initex.
The point is, there used to be two programs, tex and initex.
But they have been combined for several years, I think.

> 2- as it took almost 10 seconds before latex begun to compile a file, I
> used strace to see why.... and I discovered that latex was reading all
> directories in my home dir to find the file it needed to compile my
> (small) test file!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
> 
> It is more and more like M$ which search a file in all possible
> directories instead of reading an uptodate database.

This shouldn't happen (and doesn't with me).
Maybe you should run "texhash" and/or "texconfig".

> QUESTIONS:
> how to build babel format for latex, pdflatex and Co as initex and
> pdfinitex no longer exist?

Do you need a special format to use babel?
I would have thought you just \usepackage[language]{babel} 
in your LaTeX file (with appropriate "language").

> how to prevent TeX/Latex read all directories and subdirectories and
> subsubdirectories and.... before compiling a file. In a word: how to set
> the environment variables .....

There is something wrong with your setup.
TeX/LaTeX reads the file texmf.cnf to see where to look for files.
To find the file in use you can say "kpsewhich texmf.cnf".
But first try "texhash" as root, to see if that solves the problem.

Incidentally, I doubt if this has anything to do with Fedora -
you would probably be better off asking in the comp.text.tex newsgroup.

As a matter of interest, teTeX has effectively ended its life,
and has been replaced by TeXlive.
I assume this will be a problem for distribution administrators.


-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail (<80k only): tim /at/ birdsnest.maths.tcd.ie
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland