[tex-live] pdftex choking on czhyph

[Petr Olsak]

On Wed, 9 Oct 2002, Roozbeh Pournader wrote:

>
> I get an error when trying to generate pdftex.fmt with TL's
> source.development version of pdftex:
>
>    $ pdftex -ini -fmt=pdftex -progname=pdftex pdftex.ini
> ...

Hi,

there is the same log of this problem reportet by one Czech user:

> Zkusil jsem zatim jenom nainstalovat (na Linux), a je tam nejaky problem:
>
> running `pdftex -ini   -fmt=pdftex -progname=pdftex pdftex.ini' ...
> This is pdfTeX, Version 3.14159-1.00b-pretest-20020211 (Web2C 7.3.7x)
(INITEX)
> (/usr/local/texlive7t/texmf/pdftex/plain/config/pdftex.ini
> (/usr/local/texlive7t/texmf/tex/generic/babel/bplain.tex
> (/usr/local/texlive7t/texmf/tex/plain/base/plain.tex
> Preloading the plain format: codes, registers, parameters, fonts, more
fonts,
> macros, math definitions, output routines, hyphenation
> (/usr/local/texlive7t/texmf/tex/generic/babel/hyphen.cfg
> (/usr/local/texlive7t/texmf/tex/generic/babel/plain.def)
> (/usr/local/texlive7t/texmf/tex/generic/hyphen/ushyph.tex)
> (/usr/local/texlive7t/texmf/tex/generic/hyphen/dumyhyph.tex)
> (/usr/local/texlive7t/texmf/tex/generic/hyphen/zerohyph.tex)
> (/usr/local/texlive7t/texmf/tex/generic/hyphen/czhyph.tex
> ! Bad \patterns.
> \'#1->{
>        \accent 19 #1}
> l.40 .a4d\'e
>
> ?
> ! Emergency stop.
> \'#1->{
>        \accent 19 #1}
> l.40 .a4d\'e

The user switched on the czech hyphens in the babel package
and he run to make all formats. The pdfTeX format fails.
The consequence: the TeXlive is unusable for Czech TeX user.

IMHO this is the principial bug of names convention very closelly
connected to the DEK's Copyright. The pdftex.ini file have not to call the
babel macros! This file was OK in previous versions of the TeXlive.
We suppose the same output from the "tex document" command as from
the "pdftex document" command, only the format of output isn't dvi
but PDF. We don't suppose that the totally different macro package
will be used when format is generated.

I remember that in 1996 (?? may be) Frank Mittelbach have patched
the plain macros for TeX in order to include another hyphen patterns
automatically. DEK explicitly says that this patch not conform to his
Copyright and this patch was removed immediatelly. Now, we have the
similar situation, but in little bit another name space: not TeX and
plain, but pdfTeX and pdfplain. These names are not the subject of
DEK's Copyright, of course. But I strongly vote to respect in this
name space the same principles.

Now, the technical information: the czhyph.tex patterns are dessigned to
include many times in different encodings. First, the macros define
the expansion of \', \v etc. to choosen font encoding and then the
czhyph.tex is included. Afterward the macros define expansion of \',
\v etc. to another encoding and _the same_ czhyph.tex is included
secondly with another \language register. This principle works in
cslatex and csplain formats since 1992. We need not babelised plain
because we are using csplain. In 1999, I have added some lines of
macros to czhyph.tex in order to it may be included in babelised
LaTeX too. I am not supporting babelised plain, because the csplain
is sufficient.

The CSTeX (namelly the formats csplain and cslatex) is not responsible
to this bug, but the TeX live with this bug is unusable for Czech
users. So, I am asking the author of the change in pdftex.ini file:

please, correct this bug.

Thank you

Petr Olsak
the maintainer of the CSTeX