On Aug 18, 2009, at 8:04 PM, John Culleton wrote:
OK, so I can't use Context-minimals and still use pdftex. I discovered years ago that many plain pdftex files would work with texexec because Context is really an elaborate set of macros depending on pdftex. I'll try texexec on my pdftex oriented file and see if it works. I do most of my work in plain pdftex.
I don't know enough about plain (pdf)TeX to be of much help, but just a few thoughts: 1. luatex does in fact produce a format file plain.fmt, and since luatex should be pretty compatible, this may be a start. 2. There is absolutely no problem in having TeXLive and the ConTeXT minimals installed side-by-side; I have it on all my computers, both OS X and linux. I have two files with setup commands which I source for using either system, and then I can have two terminal tabs/windows open and use one or the other. 3. It should be easy to produce pdftex.fmt in the minimals; it just lacks a tool such as fmtutil. But you could try and copy over etex.ini for your texlive-installation and then run pdftex on it. HTH Thomas