After starting afresh after an os update and much trouble in getting all those texmf.cnf parameters in order followed by context specialities, I finally managed to get the cont-en.fmt in /usr/local/ texlive/2007/texmf-config/web2c/pdftex/cont-en.fmt. But now (running in TeXShop) typesetting will not occur: TeXExec | processing document 'test.tex' TeXExec | no ctx file found TeXExec | tex processing method: context TeXExec | TeX run 1 TeXExec | writing option file test.top TeXExec | using randomseed 1100 TeXExec | tex engine: pdftex TeXExec | tex format: cont-en This is pdfTeXk, Version 3.141592-1.40.5 (Web2C 7.5.6) \write18 enabled. %&-line parsing enabled. (/usr/local/texlive/2007/texmf/web2c/natural.tcx) (Fatal format file error; I'm stymied) TeXExec | runtime: 0.601367 In texmf.cnf I have TEXFORMATS = .;$TEXMF/web2c/{$engine,}// (worked in the past) What's wrong here? Hans van der Meer