tex man page on BSDi

Man page or keyword search:  
man Server   6284 pages
apropos Keyword Search (all sections)
Output format
BSDi logo
[printable version]

TEX(1)									TEX(1)

NAME
       tex, virtex, initex - text formatting and typesetting

SYNOPSIS
       tex [options] [commands]

DESCRIPTION
       This  manual page is not meant to be exhaustive.	 The complete documen‐
       tation 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 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.

       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 exe‐
       cutable.	 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 vir‐
       tex 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 TeXbook.	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 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)
       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  out‐
       put file will be in paper.dvi.

       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.

       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.

       --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.

       --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 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.)

       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 TeXbook.

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), 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.
       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	spell‐
       ing 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.

Web2C 7.3.1			 29 March 1999				TEX(1)
[top]

List of man pages available for BSDi

Copyright (c) for man pages and the logo by the respective OS vendor.

For those who want to learn more, the polarhome community provides shell access and support.

[legal] [privacy] [GNU] [policy] [cookies] [netiquette] [sponsors] [FAQ]
Tweet
Polarhome, production since 1999.
Member of Polarhome portal.
Based on Fawad Halim's script.
....................................................................
Vote for polarhome
Free Shell Accounts :: the biggest list on the net