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Manpages TEXSection: User Commands (1)Updated: 10 November 2001 Index Return to Main Contents NAMEtex, virtex, initex - text formatting and typesettingSYNOPSIStex [options] [commands]DESCRIPTIONThis manual page is not meant to be exhaustive. The complete documentation for this version of TeX can be found in the info file or manual Web2C: A TeX implementation.TeX formats the interspersed text and commands contained in the named files and outputs a typesetter independent file (called DVI, which is short for DeVice Independent). TeX's capabilities and language are described in The TeX book. TeX is normally used with a large body of precompiled macros, and there are several specific formatting systems, such as LaTeX, which require the support of several macro files. This version of TeX looks at its command line to see what name it was called under. Both initex and virtex are symlinks to the tex executable. When called as initex (or when the --ini option is given) it can be used to precompile macros into a .fmt file. When called as virtex it will use the plain format. When called under any other name, TeX will use that name as the name of the format to use. For example, when called as tex the tex format is used, which is identical to the plain format. The commands defined by the plain format are documented in The TeX book. Other formats that are often available include latex and amstex. The commands given on the command line to the TeX program are passed to it as the first input line. (But it is often easier to type extended arguments as the first input line, since UNIX shells tend to gobble up or misinterpret TeX's favorite symbols, like backslashes, unless you quote them.) As described in The TeX book, that first line should begin with a filename, a \controlsequence, or a &formatname. The normal usage is to say
This version of TeX will look in the first line of the file paper.tex to see if it begins with the magic sequence %&. If the first line begins with %&format --translate-file tcxname then TeX will use the named format and transation table tcxname to process the source file. Either the format name or the --translate-file specification may be omitted, but not both. This overrides the format selection based on the name by which the program is invoked. The e response to TeX's error prompt causes the system default editor to start up at the current line of the current file. The environment variable TEXEDIT can be used to change the editor used. It may contain a string with "%s" indicating where the filename goes and "%d" indicating where the decimal line number (if any) goes. For example, a TEXEDIT string for emacs can be set with the sh command
A convenient file in the library is null.tex, containing nothing. When TeX can't find a file it thinks you want to input, it keeps asking you for another filename; responding `null' gets you out of the loop if you don't want to input anything. You can also type your EOF character (usually control-D). OPTIONSThis version of TeX understands the following command line options.
ENVIRONMENTSee the Kpathsearch library documentation (the `Path specifications' node) for precise details of how the environment variables are used. The kpsewhich utility can be used to query the values of the variables.One caveat: In most TeX formats, you cannot use ~ in a filename you give directly to TeX, because ~ is an active character, and hence is expanded, not taken as part of the filename. Other programs, such as Metafont, do not have this problem.
FILESThe location of the files mentioned below varies from system to system. Use the kpsewhich utility to find their locations.
BUGSThis version of TeX fails to trap arithmetic overflow when dimensions are added or subtracted. Cases where this occurs are rare, but when it does the generated DVI file will be invalid.SEE ALSOmf(1),Donald E. Knuth, The TeX book, Addison-Wesley, 1986, ISBN 0-201-13447-0. Leslie Lamport, LaTeX - A Document Preparation System, Addison-Wesley, 1985, ISBN 0-201-15790-X. K. Berry, Eplain: Expanded plain TeX, ftp://ftp.cs.umb.edu/pub/tex/eplain/doc. Michael Spivak, The Joy of TeX , 2nd edition, Addison-Wesley, 1990, ISBN 0-8218-2997-1. TUGboat (the journal of the TeX Users Group). TRIVIATeX, pronounced properly, rhymes with ``blecchhh.'' The proper spelling in typewriter-like fonts is ``TeX'' and not ``TEX'' or ``tex.''AUTHORSTeX was designed by Donald E. Knuth, who implemented it using his Web system for Pascal programs. It was ported to Unix at Stanford by Howard Trickey, and at Cornell by Pavel Curtis. The version now offered with the Unix TeX distribution is that generated by the Web to C system (web2c), originally written by Tomas Rokicki and Tim Morgan.
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