Re: TeX setup that gives format error with new jadetex rpm.

[Mark Galassi <rosalia@lanl.gov>]

Dear Julian,

    satchell> The corresponding tetex version is tetex-0.9-6 (from rpm
    satchell> -q -f /usr/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf).

On my Red Hat 6.0 system I get:

[rosalia@odie rosalia]$ rpm -q -f /usr/share/texmf/web2c/texmf.cnf
tetex-0.9-17
[rosalia@odie rosalia]$ 

1. Do you think you might be able to upgrade your tetex packages to
   what is distributed with Red Hat 6.0?  You should be able to keep
   the old kernel and update any kind of user-level packge.

2. Otherwise, you could use the old jadetex as you have been doing,
   and things would still work for you.  I'm not sure exactly what
   improvements there are in jadetex-2.5 over jadetex-2.3, but in any
   case it is a crappy solution.

3. Third possibility: you could take the source RPM (or the sources
   out of anonymous CVS) and build the jadetex package on your 5.2
   machine: it would then build with the proper initex stuff, and
   might work.

The compatibility game is a tough one for package maintainers, but we
are usually exonerated from the scenario: "a binary package built with
a newer OS has to run on the older OS".

Of course, the *source* should work, which is why I suggest approach
(3).

Still, try (1) and let me know...