Re: TeX called improperly

[Karl Berry]

    the command syntax TeX accepts.

The standard Web2c tex and other binaries have accepted a number of
command line options for a while; --help, --version, and others.

Although I've never used miktex, I'm not surprised that it accepts such
options also.

So, the command line to tex can include both regular Unix-style options
and TeX-style stuff such as \nonstopmode.

    It (gracefully, I must say) ignores the arguments if they are quoted,
    which is how Emacs was delivering them on the command line.

I'm surprised that a quoted argument would be ignored completely.  Seems
like it would either be one (very strange) option, or even stranger
filename.  But if that's what miktex does, it presumably knows what it's
doing :).