[NTG-pdftex] pdftex: unrecognized option `-output-format=pdf'

Option -output-format is part of the -help menu, but it seems not to work in rc4/teTeX 2.96.5 (error before even the substring "dvi" or "pdf" is checked); it's at least missing from the getopt option list. Should it be pulled in or thrown out? Regards, Hartmut