[tex-live] TL2005 for Windows: paper size revisited

Karl Berry karl at freefriends.org
Thu Mar 23 18:39:08 CET 2006


Hi Harriet,

    changing pdftexconfig.tex is not sufficient to ensure letter paper
    in pdf files made by pdflatex. I found you must also recreate the
    formats. 

Ideally, the Windows installer would offer an option to set the paper
size before any formats are created, to avoid the problem.  If it's not
already there ... Staszek, Pawel?  Thomas F. did something similar in
the protext setup.

As George mentioned, "texconfig paper letter" is supposed to do the
trick on Unix, and is again supposed to be run at the end of the
installation, before any formats are made.  (In TL'05 it actually
remakes *all* the formats, which was a bug, but anyway.)

    PS All this seems like cruel and unusual punishment for using letter
    paper.

Well, the default pretty much has to be one thing or the other.
Sebastian R. (in England) started TeX Live lo these many years ago,
and Thomas E. (in Germany) started teTeX even longer ago, so ...

Perhaps there's a general registry setting or something that could be
inspected on Windows?  I don't know.  I don't know of anything
systemwide on Unix, except possibly the time zone.  But that seems
fraught with peril.

    (Admittedly this is a BAD THING, but most of us have no
    choice ;-)

I wish we benighted Americans could switch to A4 paper, the metric
system, and a halfway rational president, but it seems unlikely to
happen any time soon :(.

Cheers,
karl


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