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TEX(1) General Commands Manual TEX(1) NAME tex, initex - text formatting and typesetting SYNOPSIS tex [options] [&format] [file|\commands] DESCRIPTION Run the TeX typesetter on file, usually creating file.dvi. If the file argument has no extension, ".tex" will be appended to it. Instead of a filename, a set of TeX commands can be given, the first of which must start with a backslash. With a &format argument TeX uses a different set of precompiled commands, contained in format.fmt; it is usually better to use the -fmt format option instead. 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 de- scribed in The TeXbook. TeX is normally used with a large body of pre- compiled 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. If they exist, then both initex and virtex are symbolic links 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 for- mat are documented in The TeXbook. Other formats that are often avail- able include latex and amstex. The non-option command line arguments 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 TeXbook, 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) ap- pended, 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 out- put file will be in paper.dvi. This version of TeX can 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 for- mat and translation 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 -parse-first-line option or the parse_first_line configuration variable controls whether this behaviour is enabled. 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" indicat- ing 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. -cnf-line string Parse string as a texmf.cnf configuration line. See the Kpath- sea manual. -enc Enable the encTeX extensions. This option is only effective in combination with -ini. For documentation of the encTeX exten- sions see http://www.olsak.net/enctex.html. -file-line-error Print error messages in the form file:line:error which is simi- lar to the way many compilers format them. -no-file-line-error Disable printing error messages in the file:line:error style. -file-line-error-style This is the old name of the -file-line-error option. -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. -halt-on-error Exit with an error code when an error is encountered during pro- cessing. -help Print help message and exit. -ini Start in INI mode, which is used to dump formats. The INI mode can be used for typesetting, but no format is preloaded, and ba- sic initializations like setting catcodes may be required. -interaction mode Sets the interaction mode. The mode can be either 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. -jobname name Use name for the job name, instead of deriving it from the name of the input file. -kpathsea-debug bitmask Sets path searching debugging flags according to the bitmask. See the Kpathsea manual for details. -mktex fmt Enable mktexfmt, where fmt must be either tex or tfm. -mltex Enable MLTeX extensions. Only effective in combination with -ini. -no-mktex fmt Disable mktexfmt, where fmt must be either tex or tfm. -output-comment string Use string for the DVI file comment instead of the date. -output-directory directory Write output files in directory instead of the current direc- tory. Look up input files in directory first, then along the normal search path. See also description of the TEXMFOUTPUT en- vironment variable. -parse-first-line If the first line of the main input file begins with %& parse it to look for a dump name or a -translate-file option. -no-parse-first-line Disable parsing of the first line of the main input file. -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 shell command. This construct is normally disallowed for secu- rity reasons. -no-shell-escape Disable the \write18{command} construct, even if it is enabled in the texmf.cnf file. -src-specials Insert source specials into the DVI file. -src-specials where Insert source specials in certain places of the DVI file. where is a comma-separated value list: cr, display, hbox, math, par, parent, or vbox. -translate-file tcxname Use the tcxname translation table to set the mapping of input characters and re-mapping of output characters. -default-translate-file tcxname Like -translate-file except that a %& line can overrule this setting. -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 TEXMFOUT- PUT. 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.) TEXMFOUTPUT is also checked for input files, as TeX often gener- ates files that need to be subsequently read; for input, no suf- fixes (such as ``.tex'') are added by default, the input name is simply checked as given. 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/user/tex:" to prepend the current directory and ``/home/user/tex'' to the standard search path. TEXFORMATS Search path for format files. TEXPOOL search path for tex internal strings. TEXEDIT Command template for switching to editor. The default, usually vi, is set when TeX is compiled. TFMFONTS Search path for font metric (.tfm) files. FILES The location of the files mentioned below varies from system to system. Use the kpsewhich utility to find their locations. texmf.cnf Configuration file. This contains definitions of search paths as well as other configuration parameters like parse_first_line. tex.pool Text file containing TeX's internal strings. 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 TeXbook. NOTES This manual page is not meant to be exhaustive. The complete documen- tation for this version of TeX can be found in the info manual Web2C: A TeX implementation. BUGS This version of TeX implements a number of optional extensions. In fact, many of these extensions conflict to a greater or lesser extent with the definition of TeX. When such extensions are enabled, the ban- ner printed when TeX starts is changed to print TeXk instead of TeX. 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 TeXbook, 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, https://tug.org/eplain Michael Spivak, The Joy of TeX, 2nd edition, Addison-Wesley, 1990, ISBN 0-8218-2997-1. TUGboat (the journal of the TeX Users Group). https://tug.org/TUGboat TRIVIA TeX, pronounced properly, rhymes with ``blecchhh.'' The proper spelling in typewriter-like fonts is ``TeX'' and not ``TEX'' or ``tex.'' AUTHORS TeX was created 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 of- fered with the Unix TeX distribution is that generated by the Web to C system (web2c), originally written by Tomas Rokicki and Tim Morgan. The encTeX extensions were written by Petr Olsak. Web2C 2025 6 August 2019 TEX(1)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | ENVIRONMENT | FILES | NOTES | BUGS | SEE ALSO | TRIVIA | AUTHORS
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