It's not fully clear to me how user-side fmtutil.cnf is handled. Traditionally i (user) add multilanguage support to tex and pdftex (i don't like to type bplain :-). After editing fmtutil.cnf, these two formats are generated in local .texmf-var. Ok. But when a global format changes, the local user tex/pdftex is stymied. User has to selectively re-generate the "stymied" formats e. g. by "texconfig init pdftex". But when user types "texconfig init", the whole bunch of format files is re-generated in his home directory, unnecessarily. Actually i want only the ones that differ in the texmf.cnf from the global texmf.cnf (if the machine would be a big multi-user server, after some time many users would end up with their bunch of formats in their home directories, as "texconfig init" is so easy to type).
When i remove all files from local .texmf-var/web2c and then go through texconfig's format menue, the state is analyzed but no local format is generated. Actually the global formats are used, maybe contradicting what's in the local texmf.cnf. Only direct way to be safe seems that a user types "texconfig init", producing these many formats. Is there a trick that the local texmf.cnf is compared to the global one, and just the formats for differing lines are generated? Well, i'm already happy that a simple "texconfig init pdftex" works fine. And, maybe a way out would be that the local user only gets an fmtutil.cnf where all lines are simply commented out by default. Then the user can remove comments only for the formats he really would like to have locally. And then he indeed could simply type "texconfig init". Regards, Hartmut
