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Manpage of TEX

TEX

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: 10 November 2001
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NAME

tex, virtex, initex - text formatting and typesetting  

SYNOPSIS

tex [options] [commands]  

DESCRIPTION

This 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

tex paper
to start processing paper.tex. The name paper will be the ``jobname'', and is used in forming output filenames. If TeX doesn't get a filename in the first line, the jobname is texput. When looking for a file, TeX looks for the name with and without the default extension (.tex) appended, unless the name already contains that extension. If paper is the ``jobname'', a log of error messages, with rather more detail than normally appears on the screen, will appear in paper.log, and the output file will be in paper.dvi.

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

TEXEDIT="emacs +%d %s"; export TEXEDIT

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).

 

OPTIONS

This version of TeX understands the following command line options.
--file-line-error-style
Print error messages in the form file:line:error which is similar to the way many compilers format them.
--fmt format
Use format as the name of the format to be used, instead of the name by which TeX was called or a %& line.
--help
Print help message and exit.
--ini
Be initex, for dumping formats; this is implicitly true if the program is called as initex.
--interaction mode
Sets the interaction mode. The mode can be one of batchmode, nonstopmode, scrollmode, and errorstopmode. The meaning of these modes is the same as that of the corresponding \commands.
--ipc
Send DVI output to a socket as well as the usual output file. Whether this option is available is the choice of the installer.
--ipc-start
As --ipc, and starts the server at the other end as well. Whether this option is available is the choice of the installer.
--kpathsea-debug bitmask
Sets path searching debugging flags according to the bitmask. See the Kpathsea manual for details.
--maketex fmt
Enable mktexfmt, where fmt must be one of tex or tfm.
--mltex
Enable MLTeX extensions.
--no-maketex fmt
Disable mktexfmt, where fmt must be one of tex or tfm.
--output-comment string
Use string for the DVI file comment instead of the date.
--progname name
Pretend to be program name. This affects both the format used and the search paths.
--recorder
Enable the filename recorder. This leaves a trace of the files opened for input and output in a file with extension .fls.
--shell-escape
Enable the \write18{command} construct. The command can be any Bourne shell command. This construct is normally disallowed for security reasons.
--translate-file tcxname
Use the tcxname translation table.
--version
Print version information and exit.
 

ENVIRONMENT

See 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.

TEXMFOUTPUT
Normally, TeX puts its output files in the current directory. If any output file cannot be opened there, it tries to open it in the directory specified in the environment variable TEXMFOUTPUT. There is no default value for that variable. For example, if you say tex paper and the current directory is not writable, if TEXMFOUTPUT has the value /tmp, TeX attempts to create /tmp/paper.log (and /tmp/paper.dvi, if any output is produced.)
TEXINPUTS
Search path for \input and \openin files. This should probably start with ``.'', so that user files are found before system files. An empty path component will be replaced with the paths defined in the texmf.cnf file. For example, set TEXINPUTS to ".:/home/usr/tex:" to prepend the current direcory and ``/home/user/tex'' to the standard search path.
TEXEDIT
Command template for switching to editor. The default, usually vi, is set when TeX is compiled.
 

FILES

The location of the files mentioned below varies from system to system. Use the kpsewhich utility to find their locations.
tex.pool
Encoded text of TeX's messages.
texfonts.map
Filename mapping definitions.
*.tfm
Metric files for TeX's fonts.
*.fmt
Predigested TeX format (.fmt) files.
$TEXMFMAIN/tex/plain/base/plain.tex
The basic macro package described in the TeX book.
 

BUGS

This 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 ALSO

mf(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).  

TRIVIA

TeX, pronounced properly, rhymes with ``blecchhh.'' The proper spelling in typewriter-like fonts is ``TeX'' and not ``TEX'' or ``tex.''  

AUTHORS

TeX 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.


 

Index

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
OPTIONS
ENVIRONMENT
FILES
BUGS
SEE ALSO
TRIVIA
AUTHORS

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Time: 16:53:25 GMT, March 28, 2024