On Fri, Jun 14, 2019 at 03:15:12PM -0600, Karl Berry wrote:
at least I know there is no hope :)
It occurred to me that a general option to allow any config setting from the command line (like ssh -o) sounds viable. As in (option name tbd): pdftex -cnf max_print_line=999 -cnf another=value ...
It would parse the option argument like a line of texmf.cnf and putenv the variable=value, so the setting would override anything else.
Indeed, that would be sweet :) And you would avoid all sorts of 'need this special switch' future requests in one shot.
For integer and simple string values, as in your case, it seems it would be be portable across all known platforms. Wdyt?
Yes, it should and as you write other packages use similar technique for handling extended options. I do not know the guts of pdftex but I suppose it should be also quite cheap solution coding-wise. Pavel