David Kastrup <dak <at> gnu.org> writes: > > João Batista <joao_mn_batista <at> portugalmail.pt> writes: > > > You have some code along the lines of > > > > > > \newif\ifpdf > > > \ifx\pdfoutput\undefined > > > \pdffalse > > > \else > > > \pdfoutput=1 > > > \pdftrue > > > \fi > > > > Suppose we're using a ill-formatted template with precisely those commands. > > Isn't there a way to disable PDF output from the command line? > > > > For example, I expected that doing > > > > latex -output-format=dvi myfile.tex > > > > would override the previous code and put out a DVI file... > > This should presumably work by making any assignment to \pdfoutput > fail to have an effect. But this would still set "\pdftrue" above. > And this means that the document (which presumably does the above not > for the sole purpose of annoying people) will then compile a > non-functional document, by assuming PDF mode (which won't work). > > Then you could call for your "-output-format" option to actually make > \pdfoutput undefined. But this will mean that any template that > checks for \pdftexversion in order to see what control sequences it > can rely on will fail. > > And so on. I am afraid that covering for all broken templates in the > world is not going to work well. >
Oh man... I thought that the command line arguments took precedence over what's in the files! (IMHO, it should. I like my tools "intelligent", but I like them even more to be obedient...). For me it's not really that serious, it's more an annoyance. But I think I can live with that (as long as the "official" templates included in tetex are consistent, I'll be happy!). I'd like to ask then, what is the purpose of "-output-format"? Better yet: what was the rationale behind the switch to use pdfetex in place of latex?
