TEX(1) TEX(1)
23 January 1994
NAME
tex, virtex - text formatting and typesetting
SYNOPSIS
tex [ first line ]
virtex [ first line ]
DESCRIPTION
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 capabilities and language are
described in The TeXbook.
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. The basic programs as
compiled are called initex and virtex, and are distinguished by the
fact that initex can be used to precompile macros into a .fmt file,
which is used by virtex. On the other hand, virtex starts more
quickly and can read a precompiled .fmt file, but it cannot create
one. It is the version of TeX which is usually invoked in production,
as opposed to installation.
Any arguments given on the command line to the TeX programs are passed
to them 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 or a \controlsequence. 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. The default
extension, .tex, can be overridden by specifying an extension
explicitly.
If there is no paper.tex in the current directory, TeX will look
through a search path of directories to try to find it. 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. The system library directory
/opt/teTeX/texmf/tex contains the basic macro package plain.tex,
described in The TeXbook, as well as several others. Except when .fmt
files are being prepared it is unnecessary to \input plain, since
almost all instances of TeX begin by loading plain.fmt. This means
that all of the control sequences discussed in The TeXbook are known
when you invoke tex. For a discussion of .fmt files, see below.
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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 can
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 vi can be set with the csh command
setenv TEXEDIT "/usr/ucb/vi +%d %s"
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).
The initex and virtex programs can be used to create fast-loading
versions of TeX based on macro source files. The initex program is
used to create a format (.fmt) file that permits fast loading of fonts
and macro packages. After processing the fonts and definitions
desired, a \dump command will create the format file. The format file
is used by virtex. It needs to be given a format filename as the
first thing it reads. A format filename is preceded by an &, which
needs to be escaped with \, or quoted, to prevent misinterpretation by
the Unix shell if given on the command line.
Fortunately, it is no longer necessary to make explicit references to
the format file. The present version of TeX, when compiled from this
distribution, looks at its own command line to determine what name it
was called under. It then uses that name, with the .fmt suffix
appended, to search for the appropriate format file. During
installation, one format file with the name tex.fmt, with only the
plain.tex macros defined, should have been created. This will be your
format file when you invoke virtex with the name tex. You can also
create a file mytex.fmt using initex, so that this will be loaded when
you invoke virtex with the name mytex. To make the whole thing work,
it is necessary to link virtex to all the names of format files that
you have prepared. Hard links will do for system-wide equivalences
and Unix systems which do not use symbolic links. Symbolic links can
be used for access to formats for individual projects. For example:
virtex can be hard linked to tex in the general system directory for
executable programs, but an individual version of TeX will more likely
be linked to a private version by a symbolic link:
ln -s /opt/teTeX/bin/hppa1.1-hpux10.10/virtex $HOME/bin/mytex
Another approach is to set up an alias using, for example, csh(1):
alias mytex virtex \&myfmt
Besides being more cumbersome, however, this approach is not available
to systems which do not accept aliases. Finally, there is a program
known as undump(1) which takes the headers from an a.out file (e.g.,
virtex) and applies them to a core image which has been dumped by the
Unix quit signal. This is very system-dependent, and produces
extremely large files when used with a large-memory version of TeX.
This can produce executables which load faster, but the executables
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also consume more disk space.
When looking for a font f, TeX (and its companion programs) first look
for a file starting with f in the various font directories (see the
next section). If no such file is found, it then looks for a file
texfonts.map in each of the font directories in turn. Each non-blank
non-comment line of texfonts.map specifies mappings from one name to
another. (Comments start with % and continue to the end of the line.)
The target name is the first word (words are separated by spaces or
tabs) and the source name is the second. (Subsequent words are
ignored, so that information intended for other programs can be given
there.) Thus, going back to f for a moment, if TeX reads a
texfonts.map entry that looks like g f it will then search for a font
file starting with g.
ENVIRONMENT
See the Kpathsearch library documentation (the `Path specifications'
node) for precise details of how the environment variables are used.
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.
All the programs in the web2c distribution (as well as some others)
use this same search method.
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. Default:
.:!!/opt/teTeX/texmf/tex//
TEXFONTS Search path for font metric (.tfm) files. Default:
!!/opt/teTeX/texmf/fonts/tfm//:/var/tmp/texfonts/tfm//:.
TEXFORMATS Search path for format files. Default:
.:!!/opt/teTeX/texmf/web2c
TEXPOOL search path for initex internal strings. Default:
.:!!/opt/teTeX/texmf/web2c
TEXEDIT Command template for switching to editor. Default: vi
+%d %s
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MAKETEXTEX Arguments to pass to the MakeTeXTeX script before the
filename to create. None by default. (If set, also
implies invoking MakeTeXTeX.)
USE_MAKETEXTEX If set, a program MakeTeXTeX is invoked when TeX
cannot find an input file (before it complains about
``can't find file''). If neither MAKETEXTEX nor
USE_MAKETEXTEX are set, whether MakeTeXTeX is invoked
is the choice of installer.
MAKETEXTFM Analogous.
USE_MAKETEXTFM Analogous.
FILES
/opt/teTeX/texmf/web2c/tex.pool
Encoded text of TeX's messages.
/opt/teTeX/texmf/fonts/texfonts.map
Filename mapping definitions.
/opt/teTeX/texmf/fonts//*.tfm
Metric files for TeX's fonts.
/opt/teTeX/texmf/fonts//*.nnn{gf,pk}
Character bitmaps for various devices. These files
are not used by TeX.
/opt/teTeX/texmf/web2c/*.fmt
Predigest TeX format (.fmt) files.
/opt/teTeX/texmf/tex/plain/base/plain.tex
The basic macro package described in the TeXbook.
SEE ALSO
mf(1), undump(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.
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
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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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