Next: Introduction, Up: (dir) [Contents][Index]
This document describes how to install and use the programs in the Web2c implementation of the TeX system, especially for Unix systems. It corresponds to Web2c version 2021, released in February 2021.
| • Introduction | A brief introduction. | |
| • Installation | How to compile and install Web2c. | |
| • Commonalities | Option syntax, standard options, memory dumps. | |
| • Three programs | TeX, Metafont, MetaPost have much in common. | |
| • TeX | Typesetting. | |
| • Metafont | Typeface design. | |
| • MetaPost | Technical illustrations. | |
| • BibTeX | Reusable bibliographies. | |
| • WEB | Literate programming. | |
| • DVI utilities | DVI expansion. | |
| • Font utilities | Font format conversion. | |
| • Legalisms | Blah blah blah. | |
| • References | Books and such. | |
| • Index | General index. |
Next: Installation, Previous: Top, Up: Top [Contents][Index]
This manual corresponds to version 2021 of Web2c, released in February 2021.
Web2c is the name of a TeX implementation, originally for Unix, but now also running under various operating systems. By TeX implementation, we mean all of the standard programs developed by the Stanford TeX project directed by Donald E. Knuth: Metafont, DVItype, GFtoDVI, BibTeX, Tangle, etc., as well as TeX itself. Other programs are also included: DVIcopy, written by Peter Breitenlohner, MetaPost and its utilities (derived from Metafont), by John Hobby, etc.
General strategy: Web2c works, as its name implies, by translating the WEB source in which TeX is written into C source code. Its output is not self-contained, however; it makes extensive use of many macros and functions in a library (the web2c/lib directory in the sources). Therefore, it will not work without change on an arbitrary WEB program.
Availability: All of Web2c is freely available—“free” both in the sense of no cost (free ice cream) and of having the source code to modify and/or redistribute (free speech). See unixtex.ftp in Kpathsea, for the practical details of how to obtain Web2c.
Different parts of the Web2c distribution have different licensing
terms, however, reflecting the different circumstances of their
creation; consult each source file for exact details. The main
practical implication for redistributors of Web2c is that most of the
executables are covered by the GNU General Public License or GNU
Lesser General Public License, and therefore anyone who gets a binary
distribution must also be able to get the sources, as explained by the
terms of the GPL (https://gnu.org/licenses/. The GPL covers the
Web2c executables, including tex, because the Free Software
Foundation sponsored the initial development of the Kpathsea library
that Web2c uses. The basic source files from Stanford, however, have
their own copyright terms or are in the public domain, and are not
covered by the GPL.
History: Tomas Rokicki originated the TeX-to-C system in 1987, working from the first change files for TeX under Unix, which were done primarily by Howard Trickey and Pavel Curtis. Tim Morgan then took over development and maintenance for a number of years; the name changed to Web-to-C somewhere in there. In 1990, Karl Berry became the maintainer. He made many changes to the original sources, and started using the shorter name Web2c. In 1997, Olaf Weber took over, and then in 2006, Karl started taking care of it again. No significant development or changes have been needed for many years. Dozens of other people have contributed; their names are listed in the ChangeLog files.
Other acknowledgements by Karl: The University of Massachusetts at Boston (particularly Rick Martin and Bob Morris) provided computers and ftp access to me for many years. Richard Stallman at the Free Software Foundation employed me while I wrote the original path searching library (for the GNU font utilities). (rms also gave us Emacs, GDB, and GCC, without which I cannot imagine developing Web2c.) And, of course, TeX would not exist in the first place without Donald E. Knuth.
Further reading: See References.
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(A copy of this chapter is in the distribution file web2c/INSTALL.)
Installing Web2c is mostly the same as installing any other Kpathsea-using program. Therefore, for the basic steps involved, see Installation in Kpathsea. (A copy is in the file kpathsea/INSTALL.)
One peculiarity to Web2c is that the source distribution comes in two files: web.tar.gz and web2c.tar.gz. You must retrieve and unpack them both. (We have two because the former archive contains the very large and seldom-changing original WEB source files.) See unixtex.ftp in Kpathsea.
Another peculiarity is the MetaPost program. Although it has been
installed previously as mp, as of Web2c 7.0 the installed name is
now mpost, to avoid conflict with the mp program that does
prettyprinting. This approach was recommended by the MetaPost author,
John Hobby. If you as the TeX administrator wish to make it
available under its shorter name as well, you will have to set up a link
or some such yourself. And of course individual users can do the same.
For solutions to common installation problems and information on how to report a bug, see the file kpathsea/BUGS (see Bugs in Kpathsea). See also the Web2c home page, http://www.tug.org/web2c.
Points worth repeating:
configure time,
as described in the first section below.
| • configure options | Especially –with and –enable. | |
| • Compile-time options | Unusual -D’s. | |
| • Additional targets | Breaking down the task. | |
| • Triptrap | Running the torture tests. |
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configure optionsThis section gives pointers to descriptions of the ‘--with’ and
‘--enable’ configure arguments that Web2c accepts. Some are
specific to Web2c, others are generic to all Kpathsea-using programs.
For a list of all the options configure accepts, run
‘configure --help’. The generic options are listed first, and the
package-specific options come last.
For a description of the generic options (which mainly allow you to
specify installation directories) and basic configure usage,
see Running configure scripts in Autoconf, a copy is in the file kpathsea/CONFIGURE.
Do not make fmt/base/mem files sharable across different endian architectures. See Hardware and memory dumps.
Enable or disable the dynamic generation programs. See mktex
configuration in Kpathsea. The defaults are the inverse of
the options, i.e., everything is enabled except mktextex.
Build Kpathsea as a shared library. See Shared library in Kpathsea.
Change the default editor invoked by the ‘e’ interactive command. See Editor invocation.
Define Metafont graphics support; by default, no graphics support is enabled. See Online Metafont graphics.
Define the locations of the X11 include files and libraries; by default,
configure does its best to guess). See Optional Features in Autoconf. A copy is in kpathsea/CONFIGURE.
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In addition to the configure options listed in the previous
section, there are a few things that can be affected at compile-time
with C definitions, rather than with configure. Using any of
these is unusual.
To specify extra compiler flags (‘-Dname’ in this case), the simplest thing to do is:
make XCFLAGS="ccoptions"
You can also set the CFLAGS environment variable before
running configure. See configure environment in Kpathsea.
Anyway, here are the possibilities:
Use the original WEB fixed-point routines for Metafont and MetaPost arithmetic calculations regarding fractions. By default, assembly-language routines are used on x86 hardware with GNU C (unless ‘NO_MF_ASM’ is defined), and floating-point routines are used otherwise.
Report on various interprocess communication activities. See IPC and TeX.
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Web2c has several Make targets besides the standard ones. You can invoke these either in the top level directory of the source distribution (the one containing kpathsea/ and web2c/), or in the web2c/ directory.
Make only the C files, translated from the Web sources, presumably because you want to take them to a non-Unix machine.
Make or install all the memory dumps (see Memory dumps). By
default, the standard plain formats plus latex.fmt are made. You
can add other formats by redefining the fmts, bases, and
mems variables. See the top of web2c/Makefile for the
possibilities.
Make or install the TeX .fmt files. See Initial TeX.
Make or install the Metafont .base files. See Initial Metafont.
Make or install the MetaPost .mem files. See Initial MetaPost.
To run the torture tests for TeX, Metafont, and MetaPost (respectively). See the next section.
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To validate your TeX, Metafont, and MetaPost executables, run ‘make triptrap’. This runs the trip, trap, and mptrap “torture tests”. See the files triptrap/tripman.tex, triptrap/trapman.tex, and triptrap/mptrap.readme for detailed information and background on the tests.
The differences between your executables’ behavior and the standard values will show up on your terminal. The usual differences (these are all acceptable) are:
Any other differences are trouble. The most common culprit in the past has been compiler bugs, especially when optimizing. See TeX or Metafont failing in Kpathsea.
The files trip.diffs, mftrap.diffs, and mptrap.diffs in the triptrap directory show the standard diffs against the original output. If you diff your diffs against these files, you should come up clean. For example
make trip >&mytrip.diffs diff triptrap/trip.diffs mytrip.diffs
To run the tests separately, use the targets trip, trap,
and mptrap.
To run simple tests for all the programs as well as the torture tests, run ‘make check’. You can compare the output to the distributed file tests/check.log if you like.
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Many aspects of the TeX system are the same among more than one program, so we describe those pieces together, here.
| • Option conventions | – or -, = or ‘ ’ for values. | |
| • Common options | –help –version –verbose, and TeX/MF/MP options. | |
| • Path searching | Features of the common path searching library. | |
| • Output file location | TEXMFOUTPUT allows output in places other than ‘.’. |
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To provide a clean and consistent behavior, we chose to have all these
programs use the GNU function getopt_long_only to parse command
lines. However, we do use in a restricted mode, where all the options
have to come before the rest of the arguments.
As a result, you can:
By convention, non-option arguments, if specified, generally define the name of an input file, as documented for each program.
If a particular option with a value is given more than once, it is the last value that counts.
For example, the following command line specifies the options ‘foo’, ‘bar’, and ‘verbose’; gives the value ‘baz’ to the ‘abc’ option, and the value ‘xyz’ to the ‘quux’ option; and specifies the filename -myfile-.
-foo --bar -verb -abc=baz -quux karl --quux xyz -- -myfile-
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All of these programs accept the standard GNU ‘--help’ and ‘--version’ options, and several programs accept ‘--verbose’. Rather than writing identical descriptions for every program, they are described here.
Print a usage message listing basic usage and all available options to standard output, then exit successfully.
Print progress reports to standard output.
Print the version number to standard output, then exit successfully.
TeX, Metafont, and MetaPost have a number of additional options in common:
Parse str as if it were a line in the texmf.cnf configuration file, overriding all other settings. See Path searching options in Kpathsea.
Change (or do not change) the way error messages are printed. The alternate style looks like error messages from many compilers and is easier to parse for some editors that invoke TeX. This option used to be called ‘-file-line-error-style’.
Use dumpname instead of the program name or a ‘%&’ line to determine the name of the memory dump file read (‘fmt’ for TeX, ‘base’ for Metafont, ‘mem’ for MetaPost). See Memory dumps. Also sets the program name to dumpname if no ‘-progname’ option was given.
Stop processing and exit when an error occurs, as opposed to the normal process of trying to recover and continue.
Enable the “initial” form of the program (see Initial and virgin). This is implicitly set if the program name is initex
resp. inimf.
Set the interaction mode from the command line. The string must be one of ‘batchmode’, ‘nonstopmode’, ‘scrollmode’, or ‘errorstopmode’.
Set the job name to string, instead of deriving it from the name of the input file.
Set path searching debugging flags according to the bits of number
(see Debugging in Kpathsea). You can also specify this in
KPATHSEA_DEBUG environment variable (for all Web2c programs).
(The command line value overrides.) The most useful value is ‘-1’,
to get all available output.
Specify the directory dirname to which output files are written. Also look for input files in dirname first, before looking along the normal search path. See Output file location.
Check or disable checking whether the first line of the main input file starts with ‘%&’, and parse it if it does. This line can be used specify the format and/or a TCX file.
Set program (and memory dump) name to string. This may affect the search paths and other values used (see Config files in Kpathsea). Using this option is equivalent to making a link named string to the binary and then invoking the binary under that name. See Memory dumps.
Enable the filename recorder. This makes the program save a list of the opened files into a file with (by default) extension ‘.fls’. For Aleph, this option is always on, and the file has extension ‘.ofl’.
Ordinarily, the ‘.fls’ file is written to the same location as the ‘.log’ file, for example, respecting -output-directory if it is given (see Output file location). However, if TeX processing is done on the command line (or in response to the ‘**’ prompt), the ‘.fls’ might be written to the current directory, or include an integer (the current pid), as in texput1234.fls. You can use -jobname to explicitly set the basename.
Use tcxfile to define which characters are printable and translations between the internal and external character sets. Moreover, tcxfile can be explicitly declared in the first line of the main input file ‘%& -translate-file=tcxfile’. This is the recommended method for portability reasons. See TCX files.
This option specifies that by default all characters should be considered printable. If ‘-translate-file’ was given as well, then the TCX file may mark characters as non-printable. This is a no-op in engines natively supporting Unicode.
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All of the Web2c programs, including TeX, which do path searching use
the Kpathsea routines to do so. The precise names of the environment
and configuration file variables which get searched for particular file
formatted are therefore documented in the Kpathsea manual
(see Supported file formats in Kpathsea). Reading
texmf.cnf (see Config files in Kpathsea), invoking
mktex… scripts (see mktex scripts in Kpathsea), and so on are all handled by Kpathsea.
The programs which read fonts make use of another Kpathsea feature: texfonts.map, which allows arbitrary aliases for the actual names of font files; for example, ‘Times-Roman’ for ‘ptmr8r.tfm’. The distributed (and installed by default) texfonts.map includes aliases for many widely available PostScript fonts by their PostScript names.
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All the programs generally follow the usual convention for output files. Namely, they are placed in the directory current when the program is run, regardless of any input file location; or, in a few cases, output is to standard output.
For example, if you run ‘tex /tmp/foo’, for example, the output will be in ./foo.dvi and ./foo.log, not /tmp/foo.dvi and /tmp/foo.log.
You can use the ‘-output-directory’ option to cause all output files that would normally be written in the current directory to be written in the specified directory instead. See Common options.
If the current directory is not writable, and ‘-output-directory’
is not specified, the main programs (TeX, Metafont, MetaPost, and
BibTeX) make an exception: if the config file or environment
variable value TEXMFOUTPUT is set (it is not by default),
output files are written to the directory specified.
TEXMFOUTPUT is also checked for input files, as TeX often
generates files that need to be subsequently read; for input, no
suffixes (such as ‘.tex’) are added by default and no exhaustive
path searching is done, the input name is
simply checked as given.
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TeX, Metafont, and MetaPost have a number of features in common. Besides the ones here, command-line options and other commonalities are described in the previous section.
| • Runtime options | The texmf.cnf configuration file. | |
| • Initial and virgin | Making memory dumps vs. production runs. | |
| • Memory dumps | .fmt/.base files for fast startup. | |
| • Editor invocation | The ‘e’ response at errors. | |
| • \input filenames | Filename delimiters and Kpathsea expansion. |
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Besides the configure- and compile-time options described in the installation section (see Installation), you can control a number of parameters in the texmf.cnf runtime file read by Kpathsea (see Config files in Kpathsea).
The main purpose of texmf.cnf is to specify search paths, but array sizes and other options are also set there. Most are rather obscure. Here are a few of the more interesting values:
Total words of memory available, for TeX, Metafont, and MetaPost. Must remake the format file after changing.
Extra space for “large” TeX data structures (default 0): boxes, glue, breakpoints, et al. If you use PiCTeX, you may well want to set this.
Limit on recursive expansion calls before TeX aborts (default 10000). If a TeX program does an unterminated recursive expansion, TeX will dutifully expand macros until the system’s runtime stack overflows, typically with a segmentation fault (SIGSEGV). This parameter was introduced to minimize the chance of that unpleasant (though not dangerous) crash, instead allowing TeX to quit with a more informative message.
The crash can still happen, though, if the system has an exceptionally small memory allocation for its stack. There is no quantitative way to determine the limit, and it does not seem worth implementing system-dependent heuristics to guess at the number, since it’s highly improbable that any real TeX code will ever need more than 10000 recursive expansions (it has never happened). For the same reason, using the libsigsegv library (https://gnu.org/s/libsigsegv) does not seem worth the effort.
See Casefolding search in Kpathsea.
Ideally all arrays would be dynamically expanded as necessary, so the only limiting factor would be the amount of swap space available, or some configurable limit much larger than can currently be supported.
Unfortunately, implementing this is extremely difficult, as the fixed size of arrays is assumed in many places throughout the source code. These runtime limits are a practical compromise between the compile-time limits in previous versions, and truly dynamic arrays. (On the other hand, the Web2c BibTeX implementation does do true dynamic reallocation of some arrays.)
Nowadays there is rarely a reason to modify the values. But if you do wish to modify texmf.cnf, in TeX Live the best approach is to put your changes, and only your changes at the top of the TL installation tree. That is, if the system texmf.cnf is installed in /some/path/to/texlive/YYYY/texmf-dist/web2c/texmf.cnf is put your custom settings in /some/path/to/texlive/YYY/texmf.cnf, where YYYY is the year of installation (if you use that subdirectory; it’s the default). That way, unrelated changes to the system texmf.cnf can happen with normal updates, without affecting your local values.
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The TeX and Metafont programs each have two main variants, called initial and virgin. MetaPost no longer makes this distinction.
The initial form is enabled if:
otherwise, the virgin form is used.
The virgin form is the one generally invoked for production use. The first thing it does is read a memory dump (see Determining the memory dump to use), and then proceeds on with the main job.
The initial form is generally used only to create memory dumps (see the next section). It starts up more slowly than the virgin form, because it must do lengthy initializations that are encapsulated in the memory dump file.
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In typical use, TeX and Metafont require a large number of macros to be predefined; therefore, they support memory dump files, which can be read much more efficiently than ordinary source code.
| • Creating memory dumps | ||
| • Determining the memory dump to use | ||
| • Hardware and memory dumps |
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The programs all create memory dumps in slightly idiosyncratic (thought
substantially similar) way, so we describe the details in separate
sections (references below). The basic idea is to run the initial
version of the program (see Initial and virgin), read the source
file to define the macros, and then execute the \dump primitive.
Also, each program uses a different filename extension for its memory dumps, since although they are completely analogous they are not interchangeable (TeX cannot read a Metafont memory dump, for example).
Here is a list of filename extensions with references to examples of creating memory dumps:
(‘.fmt’) See Initial TeX.
(‘.base’) See Initial Metafont.
When making memory dumps, the programs read environment variables and configuration files for path searching and other values as usual. If you are making a new installation and have environment variables pointing to an old one, for example, you will probably run into difficulties.
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The virgin form (see Initial and virgin) of each program always reads a memory dump before processing normal source input. All three programs determine the memory dump to use in the same way:
%&dump, and
dump is an existing memory dump of the appropriate type,
dump is used.
The first line of the main input file can also specify which character
translation file is to be used: %&-translate-file=tcxfile
(see TCX files).
These two roles can be combined: %&dump
-translate-file=tcxfile. If this is done, the name of the dump
must be given first.
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By default, memory dump files are generally sharable between
architectures of different types; specifically, on machines of different
endianness (see Byte order in GNU C Library). (This is a
feature of the Web2c implementation, and is not true of all TeX
implementations.) If you specify ‘--disable-dump-share’ to
configure, however, memory dumps will be endian-dependent.
The reason to do this is speed. To achieve endian-independence, the reading of memory dumps on LittleEndian architectures, such as PC’s and DEC architectures, is somewhat slowed (all the multibyte values have to be swapped). Usually, this is not noticeable, and the advantage of being able to share memory dumps across all platforms at a site far outweighs the speed loss. But if you’re installing Web2c for use on LittleEndian machines only, perhaps on a PC being used only by you, you may wish to get maximum speed.
TeXnically, even without ‘--disable-dump-share’, sharing of .fmt files cannot be guaranteed to work. Floating-point values are always written in native format, and hence will generally not be readable across platforms. Fortunately, TeX uses floating point only to represent glue ratios, and all common formats (plain, LaTeX, AMSTeX, …) do not do any glue setting at .fmt-creation time. Metafont does not use floating point in any dumped value at all.
Incidentally, different memory dump files will never compare equal byte-for-byte, because the program always dumps the current date and time. So don’t be alarmed by just a few bytes difference.
If you don’t know what endianness your machine is, and you’re curious,
here is a little C program to tell you. (The configure script
contains a similar program.) This is from the book C: A Reference
Manual, by Samuel P. Harbison and Guy L. Steele
Jr. (see References).
main ()
{
/* Are we little or big endian? From Harbison&Steele. */
union
{
long l;
char c[sizeof (long)];
} u;
u.l = 1;
if (u.c[0] == 1)
printf ("LittleEndian\n");
else if (u.c[sizeof (long) - 1] == 1)
printf ("BigEndian\n");
else
printf ("unknownEndian");
exit (u.c[sizeof (long) - 1] == 1);
}
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TeX, Metafont, and MetaPost all (by default) stop and ask for user intervention at an error. If the input came from a file, and the user responds with e or E, the program invokes an editor.
Specifying ‘--with-editor=cmd’ to configure sets the
default editor command string to cmd. The environment
variables/configuration values TEXEDIT, MFEDIT, and
MPEDIT (respectively) override this. If ‘--with-editor’ is
not specified, the default is vi +%d %s on Unix, and an
invocation of the TeXworks editor on Windows. (See
texmf.cnf for the precise values.)
In this string, ‘%d’ is replaced by the line number of the error, and ‘%s’ is replaced by the name of the current input file.
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\input filenamesTeX, Metafont, and MetaPost source programs can all read other source
files with the \input (TeX) and input (MF and MP)
primitives:
\input name % in TeX
The file name can always be terminated with whitespace; for
Metafont and MetaPost, the statement terminator ‘;’ also works.
(LaTeX and other macro packages provide other interfaces to
\input that allow different notation; here we are concerned only
with the primitive operation.)
As (allowed) extensions to standard TeX, Web2c also supports
specifying the filename in double quotes ("some name") and in
braces ({"some name"}), which is convenient for filenames
containing spaces or other special characters, as described in the
sections below.
In all cases, space tokens are ignored after the filename is read.
Also, double quote (") characters are ignored within the
filename; there is no way to read files whose names contain a ".
However, for maximal portability of your document across systems, use only the characters ‘a’–‘z’, ‘0’–‘9’, and at most one ‘.’. Do not use anything but simple filenames, since directory separators vary among systems; instead, add the necessary directories to the appropriate search path.
| • Quotes | \input "some name" | |
| • Braces | \input {some name} | |
| • Caveats | Tokenization, nulls, Kpathsea expansion. |
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\input quoted filename: \input "some name"As of Web2c version 7.5.3 (2004), double-quote characters can be used to include spaces or other special characters. In typical use, the ‘"’ characters surround the entire filename:
\input "filename with spaces"
Technically, the quote characters can be used inside the name, and can enclose any characters, as in:
\input filename" "with" "spaces
One more point. In LaTeX, the quotes are needed inside the braces
of its \input macro, thus:
\input{a b} % fails
\input{"a b"} % ok
There is no way to quote the quote character.
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\input braced filename: \input{some name}As of Web2c 2020, \input filenames in TeX engines (this does
not apply in Metafont and MetaPost) can also be specified within a
TeX group, typically curly braces. For example:
\input{filename with spaces}
As always with TeX, the brace characters are not hardwired; what
counts is the category code: the first token after the \input
must be of catcode 1 (begin group), and it is matched with the
next character of catcode 2 (end group).
Within the group-delimited filename, braces are treated as normal characters.
As with all forms of filenames, following spaces are ignored (after
the end group), and double quote (") characters are ignored
within the filename.
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\input filename caveatsThe quoting mechanisms just described come into play after TeX has tokenized and expanded the input. So, multiple spaces and tabs will generally be seen as a single space, active characters such as ‘~’ are expanded first (generally causing an error), and so on. More examples below.
On the other hand, various C library routines and Unix itself use the null byte (character code zero, ASCII NUL) to terminate strings. So filenames in Web2c cannot contain nulls, even though TeX itself does not treat NUL specially.
Finally, the present Web2c implementation does ‘~’ and ‘$’ expansion on name, unlike Knuth’s original implementation. Thus:
\input ~jsmith/$foo.bar
will dereference the environment variable or Kpathsea config file value ‘foo’ and read that file, extended with ‘.bar’, in user ‘jsmith’’s home directory. You can also use braces in the variable expansion, as in ‘${foo}bar’, if you want to follow the variable name with a letter, numeral, or ‘_’.
(So another way to get a program to read a filename containing whitespace is to define an environment variable and dereference it.)
In all the common TeX formats (plain TeX, LaTeX, ConTeXt,
AMSTeX, …), the characters ‘~’ and ‘$’ have special
category codes, so to actually use these in a document you have to
change their catcodes or use \string.
Next: Metafont, Previous: Three programs, Up: Top [Contents][Index]
TeX is a typesetting system: it was especially designed to handle complex mathematics, as well as most ordinary text typesetting.
TeX is a batch language, like C or Pascal, and not an interactive “word processor”: you compile a TeX input file into a corresponding device-independent (DVI) file (and then translate the DVI file to the commands for a particular output device). This approach has both considerable disadvantages and considerable advantages. For a complete description of the TeX language, see The TeXbook (see References). Many other books on TeX, introductory and otherwise, are available.
| • tex invocation | Invoking TeX. | |
| • Initial TeX | Making format files. | |
| • Formats | Major TeX macro packages. | |
| • Languages and hyphenation | TeX supports many human languages. | |
| • Shell escapes | Running subprograms from TeX. | |
| • IPC and TeX | DVI output to a socket. | |
| • TeX extensions | Additional engines with additional features. |
Next: Initial TeX, Up: TeX [Contents][Index]
tex invocationTeX (usually invoked as tex) formats the given text and
commands, and outputs a corresponding device-independent representation
of the typeset document. This section merely describes the options
available in the Web2c implementation. For a complete description of
the TeX typesetting language, see The TeXbook
(see References).
TeX, Metafont, and MetaPost process the command line (described here) and determine their memory dump (fmt) file in the same way (see Memory dumps). Synopses:
tex [option]… [texname[.tex]] [tex-commands] tex [option]… \first-line tex [option]… &fmt args
TeX searches the usual places for the main input file texname
(see Supported file formats in Kpathsea), extending
texname with .tex if necessary. To see all the
relevant paths, set the environment variable KPATHSEA_DEBUG to
‘-1’ before running the program.
After texname is read, TeX processes any remaining
tex-commands on the command line as regular TeX input. Also,
if the first non-option argument begins with a TeX escape character
(usually \), TeX processes all non-option command-line
arguments as a line of regular TeX input.
If no arguments or options are specified, TeX prompts for an input file name with ‘**’.
TeX writes the main DVI output to the file basetexname.dvi, where basetexname is the basename of texname, or ‘texput’ if no input file was specified. A DVI file is a device-independent binary representation of your TeX document. The idea is that after running TeX, you translate the DVI file using a separate program to the commands for a particular output device, such as a PostScript printer (see Introduction in Dvips) or an X Window System display (see xdvi(1)).
TeX also reads TFM files for any fonts you load in your document with
the \font primitive. By default, it runs an external program
named mktextfm to create any nonexistent TFM files. You can
disable this at configure-time or runtime (see mktex
configuration in Kpathsea). This is enabled mostly for the
sake of the EC fonts, which can be generated at any size.
TeX can write output files, via the \openout primitive; this opens
a security hole vulnerable to Trojan horse attack: an unwitting user could
run a TeX program that overwrites, say, ~/.rhosts. (MetaPost has
a write primitive with similar implications). To alleviate this and
similar problems the functions kpathsea_out_name_ok and
kpathsea_in_name_ok from the Kpathse library (see Calling
sequence in Kpathsea) are used to determine if a given filename
is acceptable to be opened for output or input, depending on the setting of
the configuration variables openout_any and openin_any:
‘a’ (for “any”, the default for openin_any), ‘r’ (for
“restricted”), or ‘p’ (for “paranoid”, the default for
openout_any).
In any case, all \openout filenames are recorded in the log file,
except those opened on the first line of input, which is processed when
the log file has not yet been opened.
The program accepts the following options, as well as the standard ‘-help’ and ‘-version’ (see Common options):
These options are common to TeX, Metafont, and MetaPost. See Common options.
Enable encTeX extensions, such as \mubyte. This can be used
to support the Unicode UTF-8 input encoding, although using an engine
with native Unicode support is more common nowadays.
http://www.olsak.net/enctex.html.
With either option, TeX writes its DVI output to a socket as well as to the usual .dvi file. With ‘-ipc-start’, TeX also opens a server program at the other end to read the output. See IPC and TeX.
These options are available only if the ‘--enable-ipc’ option was
specified to configure during installation of Web2c.
Turn on or off the ‘mktex’ script associated with filetype. For TeX proper, filetype can only be ‘tex’ and ‘tfm’, but for pdfTeX and luaTeX, it can also be ‘pk’.
If we are INITEX (see Initial and virgin), enable MLTeX
extensions such as \charsubdef. Implicitly set if the program
name is mltex. See MLTeX.
Use string as the DVI file comment. Ordinarily, this comment records the date and time of the TeX run, but if you are doing regression testing, you may not want the DVI file to have this spurious difference. This is also taken from the environment variable and config file value ‘output_comment’.
Enable, or disable, or enable with restrictions the
\write18{shell-command} feature for external executing
shell commands. See Shell escapes.
Synonyms for -shell-escape and -no-shell-escape, for compatibility with MiKTeX. (MiKTeX also accepts both pairs of options.) See Shell escapes.
This option makes TeX output specific source information using ‘\special’ commands in the DVI file. These ‘\special’ track the current file name and line number.
Using the first form of this option, the ‘\special’ commands are inserted automatically.
In the second form of the option, string is a comma separated list of the following values: ‘cr’, ‘display’, ‘hbox’, ‘math’, ‘par’, ‘parend’, ‘vbox’. You can use this list to specify where you want TeX to output such commands. For example, ‘-src-specials=cr,math’ will output source information every line and every math formula.
These commands can be used with the appropriate DVI viewer and text editor to switch from the current position in the editor to the same position in the viewer and back from the viewer to the editor.
This option works by inserting ‘\special’ commands into the token stream, and thus in principle these additional tokens can be recovered or seen by the tricky-enough macros. If you run across a case, let us know, because this counts as a bug. However, such bugs are very hard to fix, requiring significant changes to TeX, so please don’t count on it.
Redefining ‘\special’ will not affect the functioning of this option. The commands inserted into the token stream are hard-coded to always use the ‘\special’ primitive.
TeX does not pass the trip test when this option is enabled.
Next: Formats, Previous: tex invocation, Up: TeX [Contents][Index]
The initial form of TeX is invoked by ‘tex -ini’. It
does lengthy initializations avoided by the “virgin” (vir)
form, so as to be capable of dumping ‘.fmt’ files (see Memory dumps). For a detailed comparison of virgin and initial forms,
see Initial and virgin.
For a list of options and other information, see tex invocation.
Unlike Metafont and MetaPost, many format files are commonly used with TeX. The standard one implementing the features described in the TeXbook is ‘plain.fmt’, also known as ‘tex.fmt’ (again, see Memory dumps). It is created by default during installation, but you can also do so by hand if necessary (e.g., if an update to plain.tex is issued):
tex -ini '\input plain \dump'
(The quotes prevent interpretation of the backslashes from the shell.) Then install the resulting plain.fmt in ‘$(fmtdir)’ (/usr/local/share/texmf/web2c by default), and link tex.fmt to it.
The necessary invocation for generating a format file differs for each format, so instructions that come with the format should explain. The top-level web2c Makefile has targets for making most common formats: plain latex amstex texinfo eplain. See Formats, for more details on TeX formats.
Next: Languages and hyphenation, Previous: Initial TeX, Up: TeX [Contents][Index]
TeX formats are large collections of macros, often dumped
into a .fmt file (see Memory dumps) by tex -ini
(see Initial TeX). A number of formats are in reasonably
widespread use, and the Web2c Makefile has targets to make the versions
current at the time of release. You can change which formats are
automatically built by setting the fmts Make variable; by default,
only the ‘plain’ and ‘latex’ formats are made.
Nowadays, the formats are generally installed and updated as part of a larger TeX distribution, such as TeX Live (https://tug.org/texlive).
The most widely used format. The current release is named ‘LaTeX2e’; new versions are released approximately every six months, with patches issued as needed. The old release was called ‘LaTeX 2.09’, and is no longer maintained or supported. LaTeX attempts to provide generic markup instructions, such as “emphasize”, instead of specific typesetting instructions, such as “use the 10pt Computer Modern italic font”. The LaTeX home page: https://www.latex-project.org.
ConTeXt is an independent macro package which has a basic document structuring approach similar to LaTeX. It also supports creating interactive PDF files and has integrated MetaPost support, among many other interesting features. The ConTeXt home page: http://www.pragma-ade.com.
The official typesetting system of the American Mathematical Society. Like LaTeX, it encourages generic markup commands. The AMS also provides many LaTeX packages for authors who prefer LaTeX. Taken together, they are used to produce nearly all AMS publications, e.g., Mathematical Reviews. The AMSTeX home page: https://www.ams.org/tex.
The documentation system developed and maintained by the Free Software Foundation for their software manuals. It can be automatically converted into plain text, a machine-readable on-line format called ‘info’, HTML, etc. The Texinfo home page: https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo.
The “expanded plain” format provides various common features (e.g., symbolic cross-referencing, tables of contents, indexing, citations using BibTeX), for those authors who prefer to handle their own high-level formatting. The Eplain home page: https://tug.org/eplain.
An obsolete LaTeX 2.09 format for making slides. It is replaced by the ‘slides’ document class, although the ‘beamer’ package is the most commonly method for making slides nowadays. The Beamer page on CTAN: https://ctan.org/pkg/beamer.
Next: Shell escapes, Previous: Formats, Up: TeX [Contents][Index]
TeX supports most natural languages. See also TeX extensions.
| • MLTeX | Multi-lingual TeX. | |
| • TCX files | Support for different character sets & fonts. | |
| • patgen invocation | Creating hyphenation patterns. |
Next: TCX files, Up: Languages and hyphenation [Contents][Index]
Multi-lingual TeX (mltex) is an extension of TeX originally
written by Michael Ferguson and now updated and maintained by Bernd
Raichle. With the advent of Unicode, it has become obsolete, though
it is still supported in Web2c in the event of bugs or compilation
bugs.
MLTeX allows the use of non-existing glyphs in a font by declaring
glyph substitutions. These are restricted to substitutions of an
accented character glyph, which need not be defined in the current
font, by its appropriate \accent construction using a base and
accent character glyph, which do have to exist in the current font.
This substitution is automatically done behind the scenes, if
necessary, and thus MLTeX additionally supports hyphenation of
words containing an accented character glyph for fonts missing this
glyph (e.g., Computer Modern). Standard TeX suppresses hyphenation
in this case.
MLTeX works at .fmt-creation time: the basic idea is to
specify the ‘-mltex’ option to TeX when you \dump a
format. Then, when you subsequently invoke TeX and read that
.fmt file, the MLTeX features described below will be enabled.
Generally, you use special macro files to create an MLTeX .fmt
file.
The sections below describe the two new primitives that MLTeX defines. Aside from these, MLTeX is completely compatible with standard TeX.
| • \charsubdef | Character substitution definitions. | |
| • \tracingcharsubdef | Tracing substitutions. |
Next: \tracingcharsubdef, Up: MLTeX [Contents][Index]
\charsubdef: Character substitutionsThe most important primitive MLTeX adds is \charsubdef, used
in a way reminiscent of \chardef:
\charsubdef composite [=] accent base
Each of composite, accent, and base are font glyph numbers, expressed in the usual TeX syntax: `\e symbolically, '145 for octal, "65 for hex, 101 for decimal.
MLTeX’s \charsubdef declares how to construct an accented
character glyph (not necessarily existing in the current font) using two
character glyphs (that do exist). Thus it defines whether a character
glyph code, either typed as a single character or using the \char
primitive, will be mapped to a font glyph or to an \accent glyph
construction.
For example, if you assume glyph code 138
(decimal) for an e-circumflex
and you are using the Computer Modern fonts, which have the circumflex
accent in position 18 and lowercase ‘e’ in the usual ASCII position 101
decimal, you would use \charsubdef as follows:
\charsubdef 138 = 18 101
For the plain TeX format to make use of this substitution, you have
to redefine the circumflex accent macro \^ in such a way that if
its argument is character ‘e’ the expansion \char138 is used
instead of \accent18 e. Similar \charsubdef declaration
and macro redefinitions have to be done for all other accented
characters.
To disable a previous \charsubdef c, redefine c
as a pair of zeros. For example:
\charsubdef '321 = 0 0 % disable N tilde
(Octal '321 is the ISO Latin-1 value for the Spanish N tilde.)
\charsubdef commands should only be given once. Although in
principle you can use \charsubdef at any time, the result is
unspecified. If \charsubdef declarations are changed, usually
either incorrect character dimensions will be used or MLTeX will
output missing character warnings. (The substitution of a
\charsubdef is used by TeX when appending the character node
to the current horizontal list, to compute the width of a horizontal box
when the box gets packed, and when building the \accent
construction at \shipout-time. In summary, the substitution is
accessed often, so changing it is not desirable, nor generally useful.)
Previous: \charsubdef, Up: MLTeX [Contents][Index]
\tracingcharsubdef: Substitution diagnosticsTo help diagnose problems with ‘\charsubdef’, MLTeX provides a
new primitive parameter, \tracingcharsubdef. If positive, every
use of \charsubdef will be reported. This can help track down
when a character is redefined.
In addition, if the TeX parameter \tracinglostchars is 100 or
more, the character substitutions actually performed at
\shipout-time will be recorded.
Next: patgen invocation, Previous: MLTeX, Up: Languages and hyphenation [Contents][Index]
TCX (TeX character translation) files help TeX support direct input of 8-bit international characters if fonts containing those characters are being used. Specifically, they map an input (keyboard) character code to the internal TeX character code (a superset of ASCII).
Of the various proposals for handling more than one input encoding, TCX files were chosen because they follow Knuth’s original ideas for the use of the ‘xchr’ and ‘xord’ tables. He ventured that these would be changed in the WEB source in order to adjust the actual version to a given environment. It turns out, however, that recompiling the WEB sources is not as simple a task as Knuth may have imagined; therefore, TCX files, providing the possibility of changing of the conversion tables on on-the-fly, have been implemented instead.
This approach limits the portability of TeX documents, as some implementations do not support it (or use a different method for input-internal reencoding). It may also be problematic to determine the encoding to use for a TeX document of unknown provenance; in the worst case, failure to do so correctly may result in subtle errors in the typeset output. But we feel the benefits outweigh these disadvantages.
This is entirely independent of the MLTeX extension (see MLTeX):
whereas a TCX file defines how an input keyboard character is mapped to
TeX’s internal code, MLTeX defines substitutions for a
non-existing character glyph in a font with a \accent
construction made out of two separate character glyphs. TCX files
involve no new primitives; it is not possible to specify
that an input (keyboard) character maps to more than one character.
Information on specifying TCX files:
%& -translate-file=tcxfile
WEB2C path.
The Web2c distribution comes with a number of TCX files. Two important ones are il1-t1.tcx and il2-t1.tcx, which support ISO Latin 1 and ISO Latin 2, respectively, with Cork-encoded fonts (a.k.a. the LaTeX T1 encoding). TCX files for Czech, Polish, and Slovak are also provided.
One other notable TCX file is empty.tcx, which is, well, empty. Its purpose is to reset Web2C’s behavior to the default (only visible ASCII being printable, as described below) when a format was dumped with another TCX being active—which is in fact the case for everything but plain TeX in the TeX Live and other distributions. Thus:
latex somefile8.tex ⇒ terminal etc. output with 8-bit chars latex --translate-file=empty.tcx somefile8.tex ⇒ terminal etc. output with ^^ notation
Syntax of TCX files:
src [dest [prnt]]
Finally, here’s what happens: when TeX sees an input character with code src, it 1) changes src to dest; and 2) makes the dest code “printable”, i.e., printed as-is in diagnostics and the log file rather than in ‘^^’ notation.
By default, no characters are translated, and character codes between 32 and 126 inclusive (decimal) are printable.
Specifying translations for the printable ASCII characters (codes
32–127) will yield unpredictable results. Additionally you shouldn’t
make the following characters printable: ^^I (TAB), ^^J
(line feed), ^^M (carriage return), and ^^? (delete),
since TeX uses them in various ways.
Thus, the idea is to specify the input (keyboard) character code for src, and the output (font) character code for dest.
By default, only the printable ASCII characters are considered printable by TeX. If you specify the ‘-8bit’ option, all characters are considered printable by default. If you specify both the ‘-8bit’ option and a TCX file, then the TCX can set specific characters to be non-printable.
Both the specified TCX encoding and whether characters are printable are saved in the dump files (like tex.fmt). So by giving these options in combination with ‘-ini’, you control the defaults seen by anyone who uses the resulting dump file.
When loading a dump, if the ‘-8bit’ option was given, then all characters become printable by default.
When loading a dump, if a TCX file was specified, then the TCX data from the dump is ignored and the data from the file used instead.
Previous: TCX files, Up: Languages and hyphenation [Contents][Index]
Patgen creates hyphenation patterns from dictionary files for use with TeX. Synopsis:
patgen dictionary patterns output translate
Each argument is a filename. No path searching is done. The output is written to the file output.
In addition, Patgen prompts interactively for other values.
For more information, see Word hy-phen-a-tion by com-puter by Frank Liang (see References), and also the patgen.web source file.
The only options are ‘-help’ and ‘-version’ (see Common options).
Next: IPC and TeX, Previous: Languages and hyphenation, Up: TeX [Contents][Index]
TeX can execute shell escapes, that is, arbitrary shell commands. Although tremendously useful, this also has obvious security implications. Therefore, as of TeX Live 2009, a restricted mode for shell escapes is the default mode of operation, which allows executing only certain commands, as specified in the texmf.cnf configuration file.
shell_escape is set to ‘t’ or
‘y’ and ‘1’.
shell_escape is set to
‘p’. This is the default.
shell_escape is set to anything else.
When enabled, the TeX construct to execute a system command is
\write18{shell-command}; for example:
\write18{echo "hello, world"}
From TeX’s point of view, this is a normal \write command,
and is therefore subject to the usual TeX expansions. Also, the
system call either happens during the ‘\output’ routine or right
away, according to the absence or presence of the \immediate
prefix, as usual for \write.
The shell-command string is passed to the command shell (via the
C library function system). The output of shell-command
is not diverted anywhere, so it will not appear in the log file, or
anywhere but the terminal output. The exit status of the system call
is also not available to TeX.
In unrestricted mode, the argument is simply passed straight to
system unaltered.
In restricted mode, ASCII double quote characters (") should
always be used in the argument to \write18 where quoting of
arguments is needed, as in the example above. This is to achieve some
measure of system independence. On Unix systems, these are replaced
with single quote (') characters to avoid insecure further
expansion. Care is also taken on Windows to avoid additional
expansions (from, e.g., `...`). Mismatched quotation marks
in the command string result in a diagnostic message in the log file;
no execution is performed.
After quotation processing, if the first word (delimited by a space or
tab) of the command is in the list specified by the
shell_escape_commands configuration value, the command is
executed. Otherwise it is not. In any case, a message is written to
the log file.
The shell_escape_commands value is a comma-separated list of
words. Whitespace is significant, and typically should not be
present. The default definition in texmf.cnf looks like this,
but with more commands included:
shell_escape_commands = bibtex,kpsewhich,repstopdf,...
pdfTeX and luaTeX support reading (via \input and
\openin) and writing (via \openout) from pipes if the
first character is ‘|’. The following command is then treated
exactly the same as the argument to \write18. In these
engines, the primitive variable \pdfshellescape is set to 0 if
shell escapes are disabled, 1 if they are enabled, and 2 if they are
enabled with restrictions.
The purpose of this feature is to make it possible for TeX documents to perform useful external actions in the common case of an individual user running a known document on his or her own machine. In such environments as CGI scripts or wikis where the input has to be considered untrustworthy, shell escapes should be completely disabled.
Next: TeX extensions, Previous: Shell escapes, Up: TeX [Contents][Index]
(If anyone uses this feature and needs documentation, write tex-k@tug.org.)
This functionality is available only if the ‘--enable-ipc’ option
was specified to configure during installation of Web2c
(see Installation).
If you define IPC_DEBUG before compilation (e.g., with ‘make
XCFLAGS=-DIPC_DEBUG’), TeX will print messages to standard error
about its socket operations. This may be helpful if you are, well,
debugging.
Previous: IPC and TeX, Up: TeX [Contents][Index]
The base TeX program has been extended in many ways. Here’s a partial list.
Adds many new primitives, including right-to-left typesetting and more registers. Now frozen. More info: https://ctan.org/pkg/etex.
This adds Unicode support, right-to-left typesetting, and more. Omega was the original program. Aleph is an updated version with a variety of bug fixes, and includes e-TeX. Aleph is not actively maintained. More info: https://ctan.org/pkg/aleph, https://ctan.org/pkg/omega.
Can produce PDF as well as DVI files. It also incorporates the
e-TeX extensions, new primitives for hypertext and
micro-typography, reading/writing from pipes, and much more. In
TeX Live, the command etex invokes pdfTeX to make all
these additions available with DVI output. Home page:
http://pdftex.org.
Embeds the Lua programming language (http://lua.org) and opens up the TeX typesetting engine to control from Lua, starting from the pdfTeX capabilities as a base. Also natively supports UTF-8 input, the OpenType and TrueType font formats, and use of system fonts. Home page: http://luatex.org.
Combines support for Unicode input, the OpenType and TrueType font formats, and use of system fonts with the capabilities of pdfTeX, with the exception of the font expansion part of micro-typography. Home page: https://tug.org/xetex.
With additional support for Japanese; pTeX was the original engine, and upTeX has native Unicode support and thus is more useful for Chinese and Korean. More info: https://ctan.org/pkg/ptex, https://ctan.org/pkg/uptex.
Further extends pTeX and upTeX with the e-TeX extensions. More info: https://ctan.org/pkg/eptex, https://ctan.org/pkg/euptex.
Metafont is a system for producing shapes; it was designed for producing complete typeface families, but it can also produce geometric designs, dingbats, etc. And it has considerable mathematical and equation-solving capabilities which can be useful entirely on their own.
Metafont is a batch language, like C or Pascal: you compile a Metafont program into a corresponding font, rather than interactively drawing lines or curves. This approach has both considerable disadvantages (people unfamiliar with conventional programming languages will be unlikely to find it usable) and considerable advantages (you can make your design intentions specific and parameterizable). For a complete description of the Metafont language, see The METAFONTbook (see References).
| • mf invocation | Invoking Metafont. | |
| • Initial Metafont | Making bases. | |
| • Modes | Device definitions for Metafont. | |
| • Online Metafont graphics | Seeing MF output online. | |
| • gftodvi invocation | Making proofsheets for fonts. | |
| • mft invocation | Prettyprinting Metafont sources. |
Next: Initial Metafont, Up: Metafont [Contents][Index]
mf invocationMetafont (usually invoked as mf) reads character definitions
specified in the Metafont programming language, and outputs the
corresponding font. This section merely describes the options available
in the Web2c implementation. For a complete description of the Metafont
language, see The Metafontbook (see References).
Metafont processes its command line and determines its memory dump (base) file in a way exactly analogous to MetaPost and TeX (see tex invocation, and see Memory dumps). Synopses:
mf [option]… [mfname[.mf]] [mf-commands] mf [option]… \first-line mf [option]… &base args
Most commonly, a Metafont invocation looks like this:
mf '\mode:=mode; mag:=magnification; input mfname'
(The single quotes avoid unwanted interpretation by the shell.)
Metafont searches the usual places for the main input file mfname
(see Supported file formats in Kpathsea), extending
mfname with .mf if necessary. To see all the relevant
paths, set the environment variable KPATHSEA_DEBUG to ‘-1’
before running the program. By default, Metafont runs an external
program named mktexmf to create any nonexistent Metafont source
files you input. You can disable this at configure-time or runtime
(see mktex configuration in Kpathsea). This is mostly
for the sake of the EC fonts, which can be generated at any size.
Metafont writes the main GF output to the file basemfname.nnngf, where nnn is the font resolution in pixels per inch, and basemfname is the basename of mfname, or ‘mfput’ if no input file was specified. A GF file contains bitmaps of the actual character shapes. Usually GF files are converted immediately to PK files with GFtoPK (see gftopk invocation), since PK files contain equivalent information, but are more compact. (Metafont output in GF format rather than PK for only historical reasons.)
Metafont also usually writes a metric file in TFM format to basemfname.tfm. A TFM file contains character dimensions, kerns, and ligatures, and spacing parameters. TeX reads only this .tfm file, not the GF file.
The mode in the example command above is a name referring to a
device definition (see Modes); for example, localfont or
ljfour. These device definitions must generally be precompiled
into the base file. If you leave this out, the default is proof
mode, as stated in The Metafontbook, in which Metafont outputs at
a resolution of 2602dpi; this is usually not what you want. The
remedy is simply to assign a different mode—localfont, for
example.
The magnification assignment in the example command above is a
magnification factor; for example, if the device is 600dpi and you
specify mag:=2, Metafont will produce output at 1200dpi.
Very often, the magnification is an expression such as
magstep(.5), corresponding to a TeX “magstep”, which are
factors of
After running Metafont, you can use the font in a TeX document as usual. For example:
\font\myfont = newfont \myfont Now I am typesetting in my new font (minimum hamburgers).
The program accepts the following options, as well as the standard ‘-help’ and ‘-version’ (see Common options):
These options are common to TeX, Metafont, and MetaPost. See Common options.
Turn on or off the ‘mktex’ script associated with filetype. The only value that makes sense for filetype is ‘mf’.
Next: Modes, Previous: mf invocation, Up: Metafont [Contents][Index]
inimf is the “initial” form of Metafont, which does lengthy
initializations avoided by the “virgin” (vir) form, so as to
be capable of dumping ‘.base’ files (see Memory dumps). For
a detailed comparison of virgin and initial forms, see Initial and virgin.
For a list of options and other information, see mf invocation.
The only memory dump file commonly used with Metafont is the default ‘plain.base’, also known as ‘mf.base’ (again, see Memory dumps). It is created by default during installation, but you can also do so by hand if necessary (e.g., if a Metafont update is issued):
mf -ini '\input plain; input modes; dump'
(The quotes prevent interpretation of the backslashes from the shell.) Then install the resulting plain.base in ‘$(basedir)’ (/usr/local/share/texmf/web2c by default), and link mf.base to it.
For an explanation of the additional modes.mf file, see Modes. This file has no counterpart in TeX or MetaPost.
In the past, it was sometimes useful to create a base file cmmf.base (a.k.a. cm.base), with the Computer Modern macros also included in the base file. Nowadays, however, the additional time required to read cmbase.mf is exceedingly small, usually not enough to be worth the administrative hassle of updating the cmmf.base file when you install a new version of modes.mf. People actually working on a typeface may still find it worthwhile to create their own base file, of course.
Next: Online Metafont graphics, Previous: Initial Metafont, Up: Metafont [Contents][Index]
Running Metafont and creating Metafont base files requires information that TeX and MetaPost do not: mode definitions which specify device characteristics, so Metafont can properly rasterize the shapes.
When making a base file, a file containing modes for locally-available devices should be input after plain.mf. One commonly used file is ftp://ftp.tug.org/tex/modes.mf; it includes all known definitions.
If, however, for some reason you have decreased the memory available in
your Metafont, you may need to copy modes.mf and remove the
definitions irrelevant to you (probably most of them) instead of using
it directly. (Or, if you’re a Metafont hacker, maybe you can suggest a
way to redefine mode_def and/or mode_setup; right now, the
amount of memory used is approximately four times the total length of
the mode_def names, and that’s a lot.)
If you have a device not included in modes.mf, please see comments in that file for how to create the new definition, and please send the definition to tex-fonts@math.utah.edu to get it included in the next release of modes.mf.
Usually, when you run Metafont you must supply the name of a mode that
was dumped in the base file. But you can also define the mode
characteristics dynamically, by invoking Metafont with an assignment to
smode instead of mode, like this:
mf '\smode:="newmode.mf"; mag:=magnification; input mfname'
This is most useful when you are working on the definition of a new mode.
The magnification and mfname arguments are explained in
mf invocation. In the file newmode.mf, you should have the
following (with no mode_def or enddef), if you are using
modes.mf conventions:
mode_param (pixels_per_inch, dpi); mode_param (blacker, b); mode_param (fillin, f); mode_param (o_correction, o); mode_common_setup_;
(Of course, you should use real numbers for dpi, b, f, and o.)
For more information on the use of smode, or if you are not using
modes.mf, see page 269 of The Metafontbook.
Next: gftodvi invocation, Previous: Modes, Up: Metafont [Contents][Index]
The Web2c implementation of Metafont can do online graphics with a number of devices. (See the Metafont manual for more information about how to draw on your screen.) By default, no graphics support is enabled.
Metafont examines the MFTERM environment variable or config file
value at runtime, or the TERM environment variable if
MFTERM is not set, to determine the device support to use.
Naturally, only the devices for which support has been compiled in can
be selected.
Here is a table of the possibilities, showing the MFTERM value
and the corresponding configure option(s) in parentheses.
epsf
(‘--enable-epsfwin’) Pseudo-window server for Encapsulated PostScript (see web2c/window/epsf.c). This device produces an EPS file containing the graphics which would be displayed online on other devices. The name of the EPS file defaults to metafont.eps but can be changed by setting the MFEPSF environment variable to the new filename. Contributed by Mathias Herberts.
hp2627
(‘--enable-hp2627win’) HP2627a color graphics terminals.
mftalk
(‘--enable-mftalkwin’) Generic window server (see web2c/window/mftalk.c).
next
(‘--enable-next’) NeXT window system. This requires a separate
program, called DrawingServant, available separately. See the
web2c/window/next.c.
regis
(‘--enable-regiswin’) Regis terminals.
sun
(‘--enable-suntoolswin’) The old Suntools (not any flavor of X)
window system. (You can get the even older SunWindows gfx system
by using sun-gfx.c.)
tek
(‘--enable-tektronixwin’) Tektronix terminals.
uniterm
(‘--enable-unitermwin’) Uniterm, Simon Poole’s emulator of a smart Tektronix 4014 terminal. This may work with regular Tektronix terminals as well; it’s faster than the driver ‘--enable-tektronixwin’ selects.
xterm
‘--with-x’ The X window system (version 11).
There are two variants of the X11 support, one that works with the Xt toolkit, and another that works directly with Xlib. The Xt support is more efficient and has more functionality, so it is the default. If you must use the Xlib support, use ‘configure --with-x --with-kf-x-toolkit=no’.
Specify ‘--disable-mf-nowin’ in order not to build a separate
non-windows-capable Metafont executable mf-nowin (or
mf-nowin.exe).
You cannot specify any of the usual X options (e.g., ‘-geometry’)
on the Metafont command line, but you can specify X resources in your
~/.Xdefaults or ~/.Xresources file. The class name is
Metafont. If you’re using the Xt support, all the usual X toolkit
resources are supported. If you’re using the Xlib support, only the
geometry resource is supported.
You specify the X display to which Metafont connects in the
DISPLAY environment variable, as usual.
Writing support for a new device is straightforward. Aside from defining the basic drawing routines that Metafont uses (see mf.web), you only have to add another entry to the tables on the last page of web2c/lib/texmfmp.c. Or you can write an independent program and use MFtalk (see web2c/window/mftalk.c).
Next: mft invocation, Previous: Online Metafont graphics, Up: Metafont [Contents][Index]
GFtoDVI makes proof sheets from a GF bitmap file as output by, for example, Metafont (see Metafont). This is an indispensable aid for font designers or Metafont hackers. Synopsis:
gftodvi [option]… gfname[gf]
The font gfname is searched for in the usual places (see Glyph
lookup in Kpathsea). To see all the relevant paths, set the
environment variable KPATHSEA_DEBUG to ‘-1’ before running
the program.
The suffix ‘gf’ is supplied if not already present. This suffix is not an extension, no ‘.’ precedes it; for instance, cmr10.600gf.
The output filename is the basename of gfname extended with .dvi, e.g., ‘gftodvi /wherever/foo.600gf’ creates ./foo.dvi.
The characters from gfname appear one per page in the DVI output, with labels, titles, and annotations, as specified in Appendix H (Hardcopy Proofs) of The Metafontbook.
GFtoDVI uses several fonts besides gfname itself:
To change the default fonts, you must use special commands in
your Metafont source file, typically via commands like slantfont
slantlj4. There is no default slant font since no one printer is
suitable as a default. You can make your own by copying one of the
existing files, such as
.../fonts/source/public/misc/slantlj4.mf and then running
mf on it.
For testing purposes, you may it useful to run mf-nowin rtest
(hit RETURN when it stops) to get a gf file of a thorn glyph.
Or use mf instead of mf-nowin to have the glyph(s)
displayed on the screen. After that, gftodvi rtest.2602gf
should produce rtest.dvi, which you process as usual.
The program accepts the following option, as well as the standard ‘-verbose’, ‘-help’, and ‘-version’ (see Common options):
Typeset the so-called overflow labels, if any, points TeX points from the right edge of the character bounding box. The default is a little over two inches (ten million scaled points, to be precise). Overflow equations are used to locate coordinates when their actual position is too crowded with other information.
Previous: gftodvi invocation, Up: Metafont [Contents][Index]
MFT translates a Metafont program into a TeX document suitable for typesetting, with the aid of TeX macros defined in the file mftmac.tex. Synopsis:
mft [option]… mfname[.mf]
MFT searches the usual places for mfname (see Supported file
formats in Kpathsea). To see all the relevant paths, set the
environment variable KPATHSEA_DEBUG to ‘-1’ before running
the program. The output goes to the basename of mfname extended
with .tex, e.g., ‘mft /wherever/foo.mf’ creates
./foo.tex.
Line breaks in the input are carried over into the output; moreover, blank spaces at the beginning of a line are converted to quads of indentation in the output. Thus, you have full control over the indentation and line breaks. Each line of input is translated independently of the others.
Further control is allowed via Metafont comments:
%%% addto fill draw filldraw
says to format the ‘fill’, ‘draw’, and ‘filldraw’ operations of plain Metafont just like the primitive token ‘addto’, i.e., in boldface type. Without such reformatting commands, MFT would treat ‘fill’ like an ordinary tag or variable name. In fact, you need a ‘%%%’ command even to get parentheses to act like delimiters.
(The above description was edited from mft.web, written by D.E. Knuth.)
The program accepts the following options, as well as the standard ‘-help’ and ‘-version’ (see Common options):
Apply the change file chfile as with Tangle and Weave (see WEB).
Read mftfile before anything else; a MFT style file typically
contains only MFT directives as described above. The default style file
is named plain.mft, which defines this properly for programs
using plain Metafont. The MFT files is searched along the
MFTINPUTS path; see Supported file formats in Kpathsea.
Other examples of MFT style files are cmbase.mft, which defines formatting rules for the macros defined in cm.base, and e.mft, which was used in the production of Knuth’s Volume E, Computer Modern Typefaces.
Using an appropriate MFT style file, it is also possible to configure MFT for typesetting MetaPost sources. However, MFT does not search the usual places for MetaPost input files.
If you use eight-bit characters in the input file, they are passed on verbatim to the TeX output file; it is up to you to configure TeX to print these properly.
MetaPost is a picture-drawing language similar to Metafont (see Metafont), but instead of outputting bitmaps in a “font”, it outputs PostScript commands. It’s primarily intended for creating technical illustrations, but can also be used to create PostScript or OpenType fonts (https://ctan.org/pkg/metatype1).
MetaPost also provides for arbitrary integration of text and graphics in a natural way, using any typesetter (TeX and Troff are both supported) and a number of other subsidiary programs, described below.
| • mpost invocation | Invoking MetaPost. | |
| • Initial MetaPost | Making mems. | |
| • dvitomp invocation | DVI-to-MPX translation. |
Next: Initial MetaPost, Up: MetaPost [Contents][Index]
mpost invocationMetaPost (installed as mpost) reads a series of pictures
specified in the MetaPost programming language, and outputs
corresponding PostScript code. This section merely describes the
options available in the Web2c implementation. For a complete
description of the MetaPost language, see AT&T technical report
CSTR-162, generally available in texmf/doc/metapost/,
where texmf is the root of TeX directory structure.
The MetaPost home page: https://tug.org/metapost.
Also, a standard MetaPost package for drawing graphs is documented in AT&T technical report CSTR-164, available as the file mpgraph.ps, generally stored alongside mpman.ps.
MetaPost processes its command line and determines its memory dump
(mem) file in a way analogous to Metafont and TeX (see tex invocation, and see Memory dumps).
Synopses:
mpost [option]… [mpname[.mp]] [mp-commands] mpost [option]… \first-line mpost [option]… &mem args
MetaPost searches the usual places for the main input file mpname
(see Supported file formats in Kpathsea), extending
mpname with .mp if necessary. To see all the relevant
paths, set the environment variable KPATHSEA_DEBUG to ‘-1’
before running the program.
MetaPost writes its PostScript output to a series of files
basempname.nnn (or perhaps
basempname.ps, very occasionally
basempname.tfm), where nnn are the figure numbers
specified in the input, typically to the beginfig macro, and
basempname is the basename of mpname, or ‘mpout’ if no
input file was specified. MetaPost uses the ‘.ps’ extension when
the figure number is out of range, e.g., if you say beginfig(-1).
You can use the output files as figures in a TeX document just as with any other PostScript figures. For example, with this TeX command:
\special{psfile="filename"}
or by using epsf.tex (see EPSF macros in Dvips).
The MetaPost construct
btex … tex-input … etex
generates a MetaPost picture expression corresponding to tex-input.
The construct
verbatimtex … tex-input … etex
simply passes the tex-input through to
TeX. For example, if you are using LaTeX, your MetaPost input file
must start with a verbatimtex block that gives the necessary
\documentclass (or \documentstyle)
\begin{document} command. You will also need to set the
enviroment variable TEX to ‘latex’.
tex-input need not be specifically TeX input; it could also be Troff. In that case, you will need the ‘-m pictures’ Troff macro package (unfortunately absent from many Troff implementations), or an equivalent such as the ‘-m pspic’ macros from GNU groff described in grops(1).
Naturally, you must use fonts that are supported by the typesetter; specifically, you’ll probably want to use standard PostScript fonts with Troff. And only the TeX system understands Computer Modern or other Metafont fonts; you can also use PostScript fonts with TeX, of course.
MetaPost-generated PostScript figures which do use Computer Modern fonts for labels cannot be directly previewed or printed. Instead, you must include them in a TeX document and run the resulting DVI file through Dvips to arrange for the downloading of the required fonts (see Fonts in figures in Dvips). To help with this, the MetaPost distribution provides a small TeX file mproof.tex which is typically called as:
tex mproof mp-output-files... ; dvips mproof -o
The resulting file mproof.ps can then be printed or previewed.
To generate EPSF files, set the internal MetaPost variable
prologues positive. To make the output files self-contained, use
only standard PostScript fonts. MetaPost reads the same
psfonts.map file as Dvips, to determine PostScript fonts that
need to be downloaded (see psfonts.map in Dvips).
It is posible for pdfTeX to read MetaPost output directly; this is
in contrast to general EPSF files, which have to be converted for use
with PDF output. The easiest way is to name the MetaPost output files
with the .mps extension. Then the LaTeX
\includegraphics command, for example, will be able to read
them, even when outputting PDF.
MetaPost can write output files, via the write primitive; this
opens a security hole. See tex invocation.
The program accepts the following options, as well as the standard ‘-help’ and ‘-version’ (see Common options):
These options are common to TeX, Metafont, and MetaPost. See Common options.
Set the prologues internal variable to 1.
When this option is given, the program texprogram is used to typeset the labels.
Next: dvitomp invocation, Previous: mpost invocation, Up: MetaPost [Contents][Index]
As of MetaPost 1.504 (TeX Live 2011), MetaPost no longer dumps
.mem files (see Memory dumps) and does not distinguish
virgin and initial forms (see Initial and virgin). Instead, the
“initial” file name is read in its source form—that is,
mpost.mp when the program is invoked as mpost.
For a list of options and other information, see mpost invocation.
MetaPost provides a format with all the features of plain Metafont,
called mfplain. You can use that in the same way; just run
mfplain instead of mpost. This lets you directly
process Metafont source files with MetaPost, producing character
proofs (one file for each character) similar to those produced with
Metafont in proof mode and GFtoDVI (see gftodvi invocation).
Previous: Initial MetaPost, Up: MetaPost [Contents][Index]
DVItoMP converts DVI files into low-level MetaPost commands in a so-called MPX file. Synopsis:
dvitomp dvifile[.dvi] [mpxfile[.mpx]]
If mpxfile is not specified, the output goes to the basename of dvifile extended with .mpx, e.g., ‘dvitomp /wherever/foo.dvi’ creates ./foo.mpx.
DVItoMP supports Dvips-style color specials, such as ‘color push
name’ and ‘color pop’, outputting them as withcolor
MetaPost commands.
The only options are ‘-help’ and ‘-version’ (see Common options).
BibTeX automates much of the job of typesetting bibliographies, and makes bibliography entries reusable in many different contexts.
| • bibtex invocation | ||
| • Basic BibTeX style files | The standard and semi-standard styles. |
Next: Basic BibTeX style files, Up: BibTeX [Contents][Index]
BibTeX creates a printable bibliography (.bbl) file from references in a .aux file, generally written by TeX or LaTeX. The .bbl file is then incorporated on a subsequent run. The basic bibliographic information comes from .bib files, and a BibTeX style (.bst) file controls the precise contents of the .bbl file. Synopsis:
bibtex [option]… auxfile[.aux]
The output goes to the basename of auxfile extended with .bbl; for example, ‘bibtex /wherever/foo.aux’ creates ./foo.bbl. BibTeX also writes a log file to the basename of auxfile extended with ‘.blg’.
The names of the .bib and .bst files are specified in the
.aux file as well, via the \bibliography and
\bibliographystyle (La)TeX macros. BibTeX searches for
.bib files using the BIBINPUTS and TEXBIB paths,
and for .bst files using BSTINPUTS (see Supported file
formats in Kpathsea). It does no path searching for
.aux files.
The program accepts the following options, as well as the standard ‘-help’ and ‘-version’ (see Common options):
Suppress the program banner and progress reports normally output.
If at least n (2 by default) bibliography entries refer to another
entry e via their crossref field, include e in the
.bbl file, even if it was not explicitly referenced in the .aux
file. For example, e might be a conference proceedings as a whole,
with the cross-referencing entries being individual articles published
in the proceedings.
If you want to avoid these automatic inclusions altogether, make n a sufficiently large number, and be sure to remove any previous .aux and .bbl files. Otherwise the option may appear to have no effect, since BibTeX will have added the citation for e to the .aux, and nothing will remove it.
See also:
Basic LaTeXable documentation for general BibTeX users.
LaTeXable documentation for style designers.
BibTeX database file for the two above documents.
Example database file with all the standard entry types.
A very large .bib and .bst collection, including references for all the standard TeX books and a complete bibliography for TUGboat.
Previous: bibtex invocation, Up: BibTeX [Contents][Index]
Here are descriptions of the four standard and four semi-standard basic BibTeX styles. CTAN:/biblio/bibtex contains these and many more (for CTAN info, see unixtex.ftp in Kpathsea).
plainSorts entries alphabetically, with numeric labels. Generally formatted
according to van Leunen’s A Handbook for Scholars. The other
style files listed here are based on plain.
abbrvFirst names, month names, and journal names are abbreviated.
acmNames are printed in small caps.
alphaAlphanumeric labels, e.g., ‘Knu66’.
apalikeNo labels at all; instead, the year appears in parentheses after the author. Use this in conjunction with apalike.tex (plain TeX) or apalike.sty (LaTeX), which also changes the citations in the text to be ‘(author, year)’.
ieeetrNumeric labels, entries in citation order, IEEE abbreviations, article titles in quotes.
siamNumeric labels, alphabetic order, Math. Reviews abbreviations, names in small caps.
unsrtLists entries in citation order, i.e., unsorted.
btxbst.docThe template file and documentation for the standard styles.
Next: DVI utilities, Previous: BibTeX, Up: Top [Contents][Index]
WEB languages allow you to write a single source file that can produce both a compilable program and a well-formatted document describing the program in as much detail as you wish to prepare. Writing in this kind of dual-purpose language is called literate programming. (The Usenet newsgroup comp.programming.literate is devoted to this subject.)
WEB-like languages have been implemented with many pairs of base languages: Cweb provides C and Troff (see References); CWEB provides C and TeX (CTAN:/web/c_cpp/cweb); Spiderweb provides C, C++, Awk, Ada, many others, and TeX (CTAN:/web/spiderweb); and, of course, the original WEB provides Pascal and TeX, the implementation languages for the original TeX, Metafont, MetaPost, and related programs to come from the TeX project at Stanford.
The original WEB language is documented in the file webman.tex, which is included in the ftp://ftp.tug.org/tex/lib.tar.gz archive (and available in many other places, of course).
| • tangle invocation | ||
| • weave invocation | ||
| • pooltype invocation |
Next: weave invocation, Up: WEB [Contents][Index]
Tangle creates a compilable Pascal program from a WEB source file (see WEB). Synopsis:
tangle [option]… webfile[.web] [changefile[.ch]]
The Pascal output is written to the basename of webfile extended with ‘.p’; for example, ‘tangle /wherever/foo.web’ creates ./foo.p. Tangle applies changefile to webfile before writing the output; by default, there is no change file.
If the program makes use of the WEB string facility, Tangle writes the string pool to the basename of webfile extended with ‘.pool’.
The Pascal output is packed into lines of 72 characters or less, with the only concession to readability being the termination of lines at semicolons when this can be done conveniently.
The program accepts the following options, as well as the standard ‘--help’ and ‘--version’ (see Common options):
The number of characters that are considered significant in an identifier. Whether underline characters are counted depends on the ‘-underline’ option. The default value is 32, the original tangle used 7, but this proved too restrictive for use by Web2c.
These options specify the case of identifiers in the output of tangle. If ‘-uppercase’ (‘-lowercase’) is specified, tangle will convert all identfiers to uppercase (lowercase). The default is ‘-mixedcase’, which specifies that the case will not be changed.
When this option is given, tangle does not strip underline characters from identifiers.
These options specify how strict tangle must be when checking identifiers for equality. The default is ‘-loose’, which means that tangle will follow the rules set by the case-smashing and underline options above. If ‘-strict’ is set, then identifiers will always be stripped of underlines and converted to uppercase before checking whether they collide.
Next: pooltype invocation, Previous: tangle invocation, Up: WEB [Contents][Index]
Weave creates a TeX document from a WEB source file (see WEB), assuming various macros defined in webmac.tex. It takes care of typographic details such as page layout, indentation, and italicizing identifiers. It also automatically gathers and outputs extensive cross-reference information. Synopsis:
weave [option]… webfile[.web] [changefile[.ch]]
The output is to the basename of webfile extended with ‘.tex’; for example, ‘weave /wherever/foo.web’ creates ./foo.tex. Weave applies changefile to webfile before writing the output; by default, there is no change file.
The program accepts the following option, as well as the standard ‘-verbose’, ‘-help’ and ‘-version’ (see Common options):
Omit the cross-reference information: the index, the list of WEB module names, and the table of contents (an empty CONTENTS.tex file will still be written when the Weave output file is processed by TeX using the default webmac.tex, though).
Conventionally, WEB programmers should define the TeX \title
macro at the beginning of the source file. Also, to get output of only
changed modules, one can say \let\maybe=\iffalse (usually as the
first change in the change file).
Previous: weave invocation, Up: WEB [Contents][Index]
Pooltype shows the so-called string number of each string in a WEB pool file (see WEB), as output by Tangle (see tangle invocation), including the first 256 strings corresponding to the possible input characters. Pooltype primarily serves as an example of WEB conventions to implementors of the TeX system. Synopsis:
pooltype [option]… poolfile[.pool]
No path searching is done for poolfile. Output is to standard output.
The only options are ‘--help’ and ‘--version’ (see Common options).
As an example of the output, here is the (edited) output for tex.pool:
0: "^^@" 1: "^^A" … 255: "^^ff" 256: "pool size" … 1314: "Using character substitution: " (23617 characters in all.)
In Metafont and MetaPost, the first 256 characters are actually represented as single bytes (i.e., themselves), not in the ‘^^’ notation. Consider Pooltype as showing the results after conversion for output.
Next: Font utilities, Previous: WEB, Up: Top [Contents][Index]
TeX outputs a file in DVI (DeVice Independent) format as a compact representation of the original document. DVI files can be translated to meet the requirements of a real physical device, such as PostScript printers (see Introduction in Dvips), PCL printers (see dvilj(1)), and X displays (see xdvi(1)). In fact, DVI translators are available for virtually all common devices: see CTAN:/dviware (for CTAN info, see unixtex.ftp in Kpathsea).
For the precise definition of the DVI file format, see (for example) the source file web2c/dvitype.web.
The DVI-processing programs in the Web2c distribution are not device drivers; they perform generic utility functions.
| • dvicopy invocation | Expand virtual fonts. | |
| • dvitype invocation | DVI to human-readable text. |
Next: dvitype invocation, Up: DVI utilities [Contents][Index]
DVIcopy reads a DVI file, expands any references to virtual fonts (see Virtual fonts in Dvips) to base fonts, and writes the resulting DVI file. Thus you can use virtual fonts even if your DVI processor does not support them, by passing the documents through DVIcopy first. Synopsis:
dvicopy [option]… [indvi[.dvi] [outdvi[.dvi]]]
DVIcopy reads standard input if indvi is not specified, and writes standard output if outdvi is not specified.
The program accepts the following options, as well as the standard ‘-help’ and ‘-version’ (see Common options):
Override existing magnification in indvi with integer; 1000
specifies no magnification. This is equivalent to setting TeX’s
\mag parameter.
Process n pages; default is one million.
Start at the first page matching page-spec, which is one or more
(signed) integers separated by periods, corresponding to TeX’s
\count0…9 parameters at \shipout time; ‘*’
matches anything. Examples: ‘3’, ‘1.*.-4’.
Previous: dvicopy invocation, Up: DVI utilities [Contents][Index]
DVItype translates a DeVice Independent (DVI) file (as output by TeX, for example) to a plain text file that humans can read. It also serves as a DVI-validating program, i.e., if DVItype can read a file, it’s correct. Synopsis:
dvitype [option]… dvifile[.dvi]
DVItype does not read any bitmap files, but it does read TFM files for
fonts referenced in dvifile. The usual places are searched
(see Supported file formats in Kpathsea). To see all the
relevant paths, set the environment variable KPATHSEA_DEBUG to
‘-1’ before running the program.
Output goes to standard output.
The program accepts the following options, as well as the standard ‘-help’ and ‘-version’ (see Common options):
Do pixel movement calculations at real pixels per inch; default 300.0.
Override existing magnification in indvi with integer; 1000
specifies no magnification. This is equivalent to setting TeX’s
\mag parameter.
Process n pages; default is one million.
Verbosity level of output, from 0 to 4 (default 4):
Start at the first page matching page-spec, which is one or more
(signed) integers separated by periods, corresponding to TeX’s
\count0…9 parameters at \shipout time; ‘*’
matches anything. Examples: ‘1’, ‘5.*.-9’.
Show numeric opcode values (in decimal) for DVI commands, in braces after the command name. This can help in debugging DVI utilities. We use decimal because in the DVI format documentation (in dvitype.web, among others) the opcodes are shown in decimal.
| • dvitype output example |
Up: dvitype invocation [Contents][Index]
As an example of the output from DVItype (see section above), here is its (abridged) translation of the story.dvi resulting from running the example in The TeXbook, with ‘-output-level=4’ and ‘-show-opcodes’ on.
…
Options selected:
Starting page = *
Maximum number of pages = 1000000
Output level = 4 (the works)
Resolution = 300.00000000 pixels per inch
numerator/denominator=25400000/473628672
magnification=1000; 0.00006334 pixels per DVI unit
' TeX output 1992.05.17:0844'
Postamble starts at byte 564.
maxv=43725786, maxh=30785863, maxstackdepth=3, totalpages=1
Font 33: cmsl10---loaded at size 655360 DVI units
Font 23: cmbx10---loaded at size 655360 DVI units
Font 0: cmr10---loaded at size 655360 DVI units
42: beginning of page 1
87: push {141}
level 0:(h=0,v=0,w=0,x=0,y=0,z=0,hh=0,vv=0)
88: down3 -917504 {159} v:=0-917504=-917504, vv:=-58
92: pop {142}
…
104: putrule {137} height 26214, width 30785863 (2x1950 pixels)
113: down3 5185936 {159} v:=655360+5185936=5841296, vv:=370
117: push {141}
level 1:(h=0,v=5841296,w=0,x=0,y=0,z=0,hh=0,vv=370)
118: right4 12265425 {146} h:=0+12265425=12265425, hh:=777
[ ]
123: fntdef1 23 {243}: cmbx10
145: fntnum23 {194} current font is cmbx10
146: setchar65 h:=12265425+569796=12835221, hh:=813
147: w3 251220 {150} h:=12835221+251220=13086441, hh:=829
151: setchar83 h:=13086441+418700=13505141, hh:=856
…
164: setchar82 h:=17448202+565245=18013447, hh:=1142
165: x0 -62805 {152} h:=18013447-62805=17950642, hh:=1138
166: setchar89 h:=17950642+569796=18520438, hh:=1174
[A SHORT STORY]
167: pop {142}
level 1:(h=0,v=5841296,w=0,x=0,y=0,z=0,hh=0,vv=370)
…
550: pop {142}
level 0:(h=0,v=42152922,w=0,x=0,y=0,z=0,hh=0,vv=2670)
551: down3 1572864 {159} v:=42152922+1572864=43725786, vv:=2770
555: push {141}
level 0:(h=0,v=43725786,w=0,x=0,y=0,z=0,hh=0,vv=2770)
556: right4 15229091 {146} h:=0+15229091=15229091, hh:=965
561: setchar49 h:=15229091+327681=15556772, hh:=986
[ 1]
562: pop {142}
level 0:(h=0,v=43725786,w=0,x=0,y=0,z=0,hh=0,vv=2770)
563: eop {140}
Explanation:
Next: Legalisms, Previous: DVI utilities, Up: Top [Contents][Index]
The Web2c programs described here convert between various TeX-related font formats; the first section below briefly describes the formats. GFtoPK is the only one that is routinely used, as Metafont outputs GF format, but it’s most efficient for device drivers to use PK.
The precise definitions of the PK, GF, TFM, PL, VF, and VPL formats mentioned below are in the source files that read them; pktype.web, gftype.web, tftopl.web, etc.
| • Font file formats | Explanations of GF, PK, TFM, VF, ... | |
| • gftopk invocation | GF -> PK (compact) | |
| • pktogf invocation | PK -> GF (expand). | |
| • pktype invocation | PK -> human-readable text. | |
| • gftype invocation | GF -> human-readable text. | |
| • tftopl invocation | TFM -> PL (for editing TFM). | |
| • pltotf invocation | PL -> TFM (make editing results usable). | |
| • vftovp invocation | VF -> VPL (tftopl for virtual fonts). | |
| • vptovf invocation | VPL -> VF (pltotf for virtual fonts). | |
| • Font utilities available elsewhere | Type 1, BDF, editors, etc. |
Next: gftopk invocation, Up: Font utilities [Contents][Index]
(For another perspective on this, see Font concepts in Dvips).
Font files come in several varieties, with suffixes like:
.tfm .*pk .*gf .*pxl (obsolete) .pl .mf .vf .vpl
Each represents a file format.
A TFM (TeX font metric) file is a compact binary file that contains information about each character in a font, about combinations of characters within that font, and about the font as a whole. The font metric information contained in TFM files is device-independent units is used by TeX to do typesetting. Unlike the bitmap (raster) fonts described below, TFM font files contain no information about the shapes of characters. They describe rectangular areas and combinations thereof, but not what will eventually be printed in those areas.
Since TeX does scaling calculations, one TFM file serves for all magnifications of a given typeface. On the other hand, the best printed results are obtained when magnified (or reduced fonts) are not produced geometrically (as done by PostScript, for example) but rather optically, with each size a separate design (as done with Computer Modern and the EC fonts, for example); then a separate TFM file is needed for each size.
At any rate, TeX produces a DVI (DeVice Independent) file from your source document. In order to print DVI files on real devices, you need font files defining digitized character shapes and other data. Then previewers and printer-driver programs can translate your DVI files into something usable by your monitor or printer. Bitmap fonts come with suffixes such as ‘.600pk’ or ‘.600gf’ or ‘.3000pxl’, where the ‘600’ is the horizontal dots-per-inch resolution at which the font was produced, and the ‘pk’ or ‘gf’ or ‘pxl’ indicates the font format. Outline fonts in PostScript Type 1 format have suffixes such as ‘.pfa’ or ‘.pfb’.
Fonts in pk (packed) format are in the tightly packed raster format that is pretty much the standard today. They take up less space than fonts in the gf (generic font) format that Metafont generates, and far less space than fonts in pxl format. Fonts in pxl format take up gross amounts of disk space and permit only 128 characters. They are obsolete.
Font files with the ‘.pl’ (property list) suffix are the plain text (human-readable) analog of the binary ‘.tfm’ files. The TFtoPL and PLtoTF programs convert between the two formats (see tftopl invocation and pltotf invocation).
Font files with the ‘.mf’ suffix are in Metafont source format. These are the files used by Metafont to generate rastered fonts for specific typefaces at specific magnifications for the specific resolution and type of mapping used by your device.
The suffix ‘.vf’ identifies “virtual font” files, for which ‘.vpl’ is the human-readable analog. See See vftovp invocation, and vptovf invocation. For further discussion of virtual fonts, see CTAN:/doc/virtual-fonts.knuth, CTAN:/help/virtualfonts.txt, and Virtual fonts in Dvips.
(This section is based on documentation in the original Unix TeX distribution by Pierre MacKay and Elizabeth Tachikawa.)
Next: pktogf invocation, Previous: Font file formats, Up: Font utilities [Contents][Index]
GFtoPK converts a generic font (GF) file output by, for example, Metafont (see mf invocation) to a packed font (PK) file. PK files are considerably smaller than the corresponding gf files, so they are generally the bitmap font format of choice. Some DVI-processing programs, notably Dvips, only support PK files and not GF files. Synopsis:
gftopk [option]… gfname.dpi[gf] [pkfile]
The font gfname is searched for in the usual places (see Glyph
lookup in Kpathsea). To see all the relevant paths, set the
environment variable KPATHSEA_DEBUG to ‘-1’ before running
the program.
The suffix ‘gf’ is supplied if not already present. This suffix is not an extension; no ‘.’ precedes it: for instance, cmr10.600gf.
If pkfile is not specified, the output is written to the basename of ‘gfname.dpipk’, e.g., ‘gftopk /wherever/cmr10.600gf’ creates ./cmr10.600pk.
The only options are ‘--verbose’, ‘--help’, and ‘--version’ (see Common options).
Next: pktype invocation, Previous: gftopk invocation, Up: Font utilities [Contents][Index]
PKtoGF converts a packed font (PK) file to a generic font (GF) file. Since PK format is much more compact than GF format, the most likely reason to do this is to run GFtype (see gftype invocation) on the result, so you can see the bitmap images. Also, a few old utility programs do not support PK format. Synopsis:
pktogf [option]… pkname.dpi[pk] [gffile]
The font pkname is searched for in the usual places (see Glyph
lookup in Kpathsea). To see all the relevant paths, set the
environment variable KPATHSEA_DEBUG to ‘-1’ before running
the program.
The suffix ‘pk’ is supplied if not already present. This suffix is not an extension; no ‘.’ precedes it: for instance, cmr10.600pk.
If gffile is not specified, the output is written to the basename of ‘pkname.dpigf’, e.g., ‘pktogf /wherever/cmr10.600pk’ creates ./cmr10.600gf.
The only options are ‘--verbose’, ‘--help’, and ‘--version’ (see Common options).
Next: gftype invocation, Previous: pktogf invocation, Up: Font utilities [Contents][Index]
PKtype translates a packed font (PK) bitmap file (as output by GFtoPK, for example) to a plain text file that humans can read. It also serves as a PK-validating program, i.e., if PKtype can read a file, it’s correct. Synopsis:
pktype pkname.dpi[pk]
The font pkname is searched for in the usual places (see Glyph
lookup in Kpathsea). To see all the relevant paths, set the
environment variable KPATHSEA_DEBUG to ‘-1’ before running
the program.
The suffix ‘pk’ is supplied if not already present. This suffix is not an extension; no ‘.’ precedes it: for instance, cmr10.600pk.
The translation is written to standard output.
The only options are ‘-help’ and ‘-version’ (see Common options).
As an example of the output, here is the (abridged) translation of the letter ‘K’ in ‘cmr10’, as rendered at 600dpi with the mode ‘ljfour’ from modes.mf (available from ftp://ftp.tug.org/tex/modes.mf).
955: Flag byte = 184 Character = 75 Packet length = 174 Dynamic packing variable = 11 TFM width = 815562 dx = 4259840 Height = 57 Width = 57 X-offset = -3 Y-offset = 56 [2]23(16)17(8)9(25)11(13)7(27)7(16)7(28)4(18)7(28)2(20)7(27)… … (14)9(24)12(5)[2]23(13)21
Explanation:
The byte position in the file where this character starts.
Related to the packing for this character; see the source code.
The character code, in decimal.
The total length of this character definition, in bytes.
The device-independent (TFM) width of this character. It is 2^24 times the ratio of the true width to the font’s design size.
The device-dependent width, in scaled pixels, i.e., units of horizontal pixels times 2^16.
The bitmap height and width, in pixels.
Horizontal and vertical offset from the upper left pixel to the reference (origin) pixel for this character, in pixels (right and down are positive). The reference pixel is the pixel that occupies the unit square in Metafont; the Metafont reference point is the lower left hand corner of this pixel. Put another way, the x-offset is the negative of the left side bearing; the right side bearing is the horizontal escapement minus the bitmap width plus the x-offset.
Finally, run lengths of black pixels alternate with parenthesized run lengths of white pixels, and brackets indicate a repeated row.
Next: tftopl invocation, Previous: pktype invocation, Up: Font utilities [Contents][Index]
GFtype translates a generic font (GF) bitmap file (as output by Metafont, for example) to a plain text file that humans can read. It also serves as a GF-validating program, i.e., if GFtype can read a file, it’s correct. Synopsis:
gftype [option]… gfname.dpi[gf]
The font gfname is searched for in the usual places (see Glyph
lookup in Kpathsea). To see all the relevant paths, set the
environment variable KPATHSEA_DEBUG to ‘-1’ before running
the program.
The suffix ‘gf’ is supplied if not already present. This suffix is not an extension; no ‘.’ precedes it: for instance, cmr10.600gf.
The translation is written to standard output.
The program accepts the following options, as well as the standard ‘-help’ and ‘-version’ (see Common options):
Show the characters’ bitmaps using asterisks and spaces.
Translate all commands in the GF file.
As an example of the output, here is the (abrdiged) translation of the letter ‘K’ in ‘cmr10’, as rendered at 600dpi with the mode ‘ljfour’ from modes.mf (available from ftp://ftp.tug.org/tex/modes.mf), with both ‘-mnemonics’ and ‘-images’ enabled.
GFtype outputs the information about a character in two places: a main definition and a one-line summary at the end. We show both. Here is the main definition:
2033: beginning of char 75: 3<=m<=60 0<=n<=56 (initially n=56) paint (0)24(12)20 2043: newrow 0 (n=55) paint 24(12)20 2047: newrow 0 (n=54) paint 24(12)20 2051: newrow 0 (n=53) paint 24(12)20 2055: newrow 7 (n=52) paint 10(21)13 2059: newrow 8 (n=51) paint 8(23)9 … 2249: newrow 8 (n=5) paint 8(23)11 2253: newrow 7 (n=4) paint 10(22)12 2257: newrow 0 (n=3) paint 24(11)22 2261: newrow 0 (n=2) paint 24(11)22 2265: newrow 0 (n=1) paint 24(11)22 2269: newrow 0 (n=0) paint 24(11)22 2273: eoc
.<--This pixel's lower left corner is at (3,57) in METAFONT coordinates
************************ ********************
************************ ********************
************************ ********************
************************ ********************
********** *************
******** *********
…
******** ***********
********** ************
************************ **********************
************************ **********************
************************ **********************
************************ **********************
.<--This pixel's upper left corner is at (3,0) in METAFONT coordinates
Explanation:
The byte position in the file where each GF command starts.
The character code, in decimal.
The character’s bitmap lies between 3 and 60 (inclusive) horizontally, and between 0 and 56 (inclusive) vertically. (m is a column position and n is a row position.) Thus, 3 is the left side bearing. The right side bearing is the horizontal escapement (given below) minus the maximum m.
The first row of pixels: 0 white pixels, 24 black pixels, 12 white pixels, etc.
The second row of pixels, with zero leading white pixels on the row.
The end of the main character definition.
Here is the GF postamble information that GFtype outputs at the end:
Character 75: dx 4259840 (65), width 815562 (64.57289), loc 2033
Explanation:
The device-dependent width, in scaled pixels, i.e., units of horizontal pixels times 2^16. The ‘(65)’ is simply the same number rounded. If the vertical escapement is nonzero, it would appear here as a ‘dy’ value.
The device-independent (TFM) width of this character. It is 2^24 times the ratio of the true width to the font’s design size. The ‘64.57289’ is the same number converted to pixels.
The byte position in the file where this character starts.
Next: pltotf invocation, Previous: gftype invocation, Up: Font utilities [Contents][Index]
TFtoPL translates a TeX font metric (TFM, see Metric files in Dvips) file (as output by Metafont, for example) to property list format (a list of parenthesized items describing the font) that humans can edit or read. This program is mostly used by people debugging TeX implementations, writing font utilities, etc. Synopsis:
tftopl [option]… tfmname[.tfm] [plfile[.pl]]
The font tfmname (extended with ‘.tfm’ if necessary) is
searched for in the usual places (see Supported file formats in Kpathsea). To see all the relevant paths, set the
environment variable KPATHSEA_DEBUG to ‘-1’ before running
the program.
If plfile (which is extended with ‘.pl’ if necessary) is not specified, the property list file is written to standard output. The property list file can be converted back to TFM format by the companion program TFtoPL (see the next section).
The program accepts the following option, as well as the standard ‘-verbose’, ‘-help’ and ‘-version’ (see Common options):
Output character codes in the PL file according to type: either ‘octal’ or ‘ascii’. Default is ‘ascii’ for letters and digits, octal for all other characters. Exception: if the font’s coding scheme starts with ‘TeX math sy’ or ‘TeX math ex’, all character codes are output in octal.
In ‘ascii’ format, character codes that correspond to graphic characters, except for left and right parentheses, are output as a ‘C’ followed by the single character: ‘C K’, for example. In octal format, character codes are output as the letter ‘O’ followed by octal digits, as in ‘O 113’ for ‘K’.
‘octal’ format is useful for symbol and other non-alphabetic fonts, where using ASCII characters for the character codes is merely confusing.
As an example of the output, here is the (abridged) property list translation of cmr10.tfm:
(FAMILY CMR)
(FACE O 352)
(CODINGSCHEME TEX TEXT)
(DESIGNSIZE R 10.0)
(COMMENT DESIGNSIZE IS IN POINTS)
(COMMENT OTHER SIZES ARE MULTIPLES OF DESIGNSIZE)
(CHECKSUM O 11374260171)
(FONTDIMEN
(SLANT R 0.0)
(SPACE R 0.333334)
(STRETCH R 0.166667)
(SHRINK R 0.111112)
(XHEIGHT R 0.430555)
(QUAD R 1.000003)
(EXTRASPACE R 0.111112)
)
(LIGTABLE
…
(LABEL C f)
(LIG C i O 14)
(LIG C f O 13)
(LIG C l O 15)
(KRN O 47 R 0.077779)
(KRN O 77 R 0.077779)
(KRN O 41 R 0.077779)
(KRN O 51 R 0.077779)
(KRN O 135 R 0.077779)
(STOP)
…
)
…
(CHARACTER C f
(CHARWD R 0.305557)
(CHARHT R 0.694445)
(CHARIC R 0.077779)
(COMMENT
(LIG C i O 14)
(LIG C f O 13)
(LIG C l O 15)
(KRN O 47 R 0.077779)
(KRN O 77 R 0.077779)
…
)
)
…
As you can see, the general format is a list of parenthesized properties, nested where necessary.
FAMILY, FACE, and so on) are
the so-called headerbyte information from Metafont, giving general
information about the font.
FONTDIMEN property defines the TeX \fontdimen
values.
LIGTABLE property defines the ligature and kerning table.
LIG properties define ligatures: in the example above, an
‘f’ (in the ‘LABEL’) followed by an ‘i’ is a ligature,
i.e., a typesetting program like TeX replaces those two consecutive
characters by the character at position octal ’014 in the current
font—presumably the ‘fi’ ligature. KRN properties define
kerns: if an ‘f’ is followed by character octal ’047 (an
apostrophe), TeX inserts a small amount of space between them:
0.077779 times the design size the font was loaded at (about
three-quarters of a printer’s point by default in this case, or .001
inches).
CHARACTER property defines the dimensions of a character: its
width, height, depth, and italic correction, also in design-size units,
as explained in the previous item. For our example ‘f’, the depth is
zero, so that property is omitted. TFtoPL also inserts any kerns and
ligatures for this character as a comment.
Next: vftovp invocation, Previous: tftopl invocation, Up: Font utilities [Contents][Index]
PLtoTF translates a property list file (as output by TFtoPL, for example) to TeX font metric (TFM, see Metric files in Dvips) format. It’s much easier for both programs and humans to create the (plain text) property list files and let PLtoTF take care of creating the binary TFM equivalent than to output TFM files directly. Synopsis:
pltotf [option]… plfile[.pl] [tfmfile[.tfm]]
If tfmfile (extended with ‘.tfm’ if necessary) is not specified, the TFM file is written to the basename of ‘plfile.tfm’, e.g., ‘pltotf /wherever/cmr10.pl’ creates ./cmr10.tfm. (Since TFM files are binary, writing to standard output by default is undesirable.)
The only options are ‘-verbose’, ‘-help’, and ‘-version’ (see Common options).
For an example of property list format, see the previous section.
Next: vptovf invocation, Previous: pltotf invocation, Up: Font utilities [Contents][Index]
VFtoVP translates a virtual font metric (VF, see Virtual fonts in Dvips) file and its accompanying TeX font metric (TFM, see Metric files in Dvips) file (as output by VPtoVF, for example) to virtual property list format (a list of parenthesized items describing the virtual font) that humans can edit or read. This program is mostly used by people debugging virtual font utilities. Synopsis:
vftovp [option]… vfname[.vf] [tfmname[.tfm] [vplfile[.vpl]]]
The fonts vfname and tfmname (extended with ‘.vf’ and
‘.tfm’ if necessary) are searched for in the usual places
(see Supported file formats in Kpathsea). To see all the
relevant paths, set the environment variable KPATHSEA_DEBUG to
‘-1’ before running the program. If tfmname is not
specified, vfname (without a trailing ‘.vf’) is used.
If vplfile (extended with ‘.vpl’ if necessary) is not specified, the property list file is written to standard output. The property list file can be converted back to VF and TFM format by the companion program VFtoVP (see the next section).
The program accepts the following option, as well as the standard ‘-verbose’, ‘-help’ and ‘-version’ (see Common options):
Output character codes in the PL file according to type: either ‘octal’ or ‘ascii’. Default is ‘ascii’ for letters and digits, octal for all other characters. Exception: if the font’s coding scheme starts with ‘TeX math sy’ or ‘TeX math ex’, all character codes are output in octal.
In ‘ascii’ format, character codes that correspond to graphic characters, except for left and right parentheses, are output as a ‘C’ followed by the single character: ‘C K’, for example. In octal format, character codes are output as the letter ‘O’ followed by octal digits, as in ‘O 113’ for ‘K’.
‘octal’ format is useful for symbol and other non-alphabetic fonts, where using ASCII characters for the character codes is merely confusing.
Next: Font utilities available elsewhere, Previous: vftovp invocation, Up: Font utilities [Contents][Index]
VPtoVF translates a virtual property list file (as output by VFtoVP, for example) to virtual font (VF, see Virtual fonts in Dvips) and TeX font metric (TFM, see Metric files in Dvips) files. It’s much easier for both programs and humans to create the (plain text) property list files and let VPtoVF take care of creating the binary VF and TFM equivalents than to output them directly. Synopsis:
vptovf [option]… vplfile[.vpl] [vffile[.vf] [tfmfile[.tfm]]]
If vffile (extended with ‘.vf’ if necessary) is not specified, the VF output is written to the basename of ‘vplfile.vf’; similarly for tfmfile. For example, ‘vptovf /wherever/ptmr.vpl’ creates ./ptmr.vf and ./ptmr.tfm.
The only options are ‘-verbose’, ‘-help’, and ‘-version’ (see Common options).
Previous: vptovf invocation, Up: Font utilities [Contents][Index]
The Web2c complement of font utilities merely implements a few basic conversions. Many other more sophisticated font utilities exist; most are in CTAN:/fonts/utilities (for CTAN info, see unixtex.ftp in Kpathsea). Here are some of the most commonly-requested items:
gftopxl,
pxtoch, and chtopx programs from
ftp://ftp.tug.org/tex/web.
ps2pk, from
CTAN:/fonts/utilities/ps2pk.
mftrace
(http://www.xs4all.nl/~hanwen/mftrace) or textrace
(http://textrace.sourceforge.net) make the job easier.
Next: References, Previous: Font utilities, Up: Top [Contents][Index]
In general, each file has its own copyright notice stating the copying permissions for that file. Following is a summary.
The Stanford TeX programs and Web2c system itself are in the public domain (https://tug.org/texlive/copying.html). The sources may be copied verbatim, or used as the starting point of new software under different names; however, per the wishes of the authors, they should be modified only through a .ch file, but this is in the nature of a development request rather than a legal requirement.
MLTeX, pdfTeX, LuaTeX, XeTeX, and all the other derived engines have used various license terms for their additions to the base code, often the GPL (see https://www.gnu.org/licenses/#GPL or (for example) the file web2c/pdftexdir/COPYINGv2. They also mostly make use of additional libraries with their own (compatible) terms. Please see each program’s sources.
The Kpathsea library is covered by the GNU Lesser General Public License (see Introduction in Kpathsea). Therefore, the binaries resulting from a standard Web2c compilation are also covered by the LGPL; so if you (re)distribute the binaries, you must also (offer to) distribute the complete source that went into those binaries. See https://gnu.org/licenses/#LGPL or the file kpathsea/COPYING.LESSERv2.
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