(Sorry for the delayed reply.) | ---! /var/lib/texmf/web2c/etex.fmt was written by pdfetex | (Fatal format file error; I'm stymied)
I believe it's a Cygwin problem and/or TeX installation problem on the particular machine. In essence, texi2dvi is doing this: echo '\input texinfo @bye' >txiversion.tex tex txiversion.tex The error message from TeX means that the binary ("tex", which was hardwired) being run is trying to load a .fmt that was written by something else ("etex"). It has nothing to do with the contents of the file. I'd expect "tex story" from the command line to fail in the same way. Usually the solution would be to rebuild the .fmt file with the right executable, and usually just removing the .fmt and then invoking the binary should do that (it is able to make the .fmt automatically these days, although I don't know if that happens with this Cygwin setup). In this case, it is not clear to me why running "tex" is trying to read etex.fmt (normally it would read "tex.fmt"); is Cygwin doing something with links or shell scripts? It is also not clear to me why PDF output works; I'd expect the same error, since the same "tex" binary gets invoked. I think you need to talk to whomever is responsible for the Cygwin TeX support. Meanwhile, I changed texi2dvi to use $TEX instead of hardwiring "tex" in the version test. I'm not sure if that will actually get around this brokenness or not, but it seems desirable in any case. You can get it from Texinfo CVS on savannah.gnu.org if you feel like trying it. To reproduce, you could do this, for example: Not surprisingly, the failure doesn't reproduce for me (the test succeeds), since my TeX installation actually functions :). Hope this helps, Karl