web2c: Initial and virgin
4.2 Initial and virgin
======================
The TeX and Metafont programs each have two main variants, called
"initial" and "virgin". MetaPost no longer makes this distinction.
The initial form is enabled if:
1. the '-ini' option was specified; or
2. the program name is 'initex' resp. 'inimf'; or
3. the first line of the main input file is '%&ini';
otherwise, the virgin form is used.
The "virgin" form is the one generally invoked for production use.
The first thing it does is read a memory dump (⇒Determining the
memory dump to use), and then proceeds on with the main job.
The "initial" form is generally used only to create memory dumps (see
the next section). It starts up more slowly than the virgin form,
because it must do lengthy initializations that are encapsulated in the
memory dump file.
Info Catalog
web2c: Runtime options
web2c: Three programs
web2c: Memory dumps