Default Paper Size

Troy Henderson thenders at gmail.com
Wed Apr 13 20:17:27 CEST 2022


I recently installed Fedora Linux on a computer, and several packages
require that I have TeX Live installed through Fedora's package
system/repositories.  However, the default paper size in this distribution
of TeX Live 2021 is A4, and I would like to change it to Letter.

The command "tlmgr paper letter" does not seem to affect LuaTeX
(specifically, LuaLaTeX) and fails with the following output:

> sudo tlmgr paper letter
tlmgr: setting paper size for dvipdfmx to letter:
/usr/share/texlive/texmf-config/dvipdfmx/dvipdfmx.cfg
tlmgr: setting paper size for dvips to letter:
/usr/share/texlive/texmf-config/dvips/config/config.ps
tlmgr: setting paper size for pdftex to letter:
/usr/share/texlive/texmf-config/tex/generic/tex-ini-files/pdftexconfig.tex
tlmgr: setting paper size for psutils to letter:
/usr/share/texlive/texmf-config/psutils/paper.cfg
tlmgr: setting paper size for xdvi to letter:
/usr/share/texlive/texmf-config/xdvi/XDvi
tlmgr: An error has occurred. See above messages. Exiting.

This is almost certainly a Fedora TeX Live packaging issue, and it could be
resolved (I'm confident) by manually installing the binary TeX Live
distribution directly from TUG (which I have done many times before).
However, this is an undesirable solution because it may cause other
packages (that depend on TeX Live) to be "confused" and also would result
in twice the storage used (having side-by-side installations of TeX Live).

My question is "how can I 'fix' this problem?".  Specifically, are either
of the following possible:

   - Is it possible to change the default paper size without having to use
   tlmgr?  Does tlmgr call/execute a particular command that could possibly be
   executed manually?
   - Is it possible to set the default paper size for Lua(La)TeX from the
   command line?  For example, "lualatex --defaultpapersize letter" (or
   similar)?

Thank you in advance,

Troy Henderson
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