[NTG-pdftex] images in formats

[Reinhard Kotucha]

Thanh Han The writes:

 > > >My vote is also to disable \pdfrefximage and the likes in
 > > >init mode.

It seems that I miss the point.  I'm actually using \pdfximage and
\pdfrefximage with pdftex -ini in a script and it works perfectly.

I don't use it to dump a format file, pdftex -ini does all I need.

The reason I use pdftex -ini is that currently all I need from a TeX
distribution is pdftex, pdftex.pool, and texmf.cnf.  This allows to
ship the script with a tiny TeX distribution.  

If \pdfrefximage is removed from init mode I have to provide a format
file which actually does nothing.  Something like:

     pdftex -ini '\relax\dump'

And I have to provide and maintain this format file and it is loaded
each time I run the program though it is good for nothing.

If \pdfximage/\pdfrefximage cannot be used in format files, it is
better not to remove them from init mode but delay error handling
until \dump is processed.

IMO it's not a good idea to remove something only because it doen't
work in certain situations.  It works fine for me.  When I tried to
use pdftex -ini for this purpose a few years ago I got segmentation
faults.  And I'm very glad that it works now.

I also think that even much more can be done with luatex -ini than
with pdftex -ini.

Regards,
  Reinhard

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Reinhard Kotucha			              Phone: +49-511-4592165
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