ETEX(1)ETEX(1)NAME
etex, einitex, evirtex - extended TeX
SYNOPSISetex [options] [commands]
DESCRIPTION
This manual page is not meant to be exhaustive. The com-
plete documentation for this version of TeX can be found
in the info file or manual Web2C: A TeX implementation.
e-TeX is the first concrete result of an international
research & development project, the NTS Project, which was
established under the aegis of DANTE e.V. during 1992. The
aims of the project are to perpetuate and develop the
spirit and philosophy of TeX, whilst respecting Knuth's
wish that TeX should remain frozen.
e-TeX can be used in two different modes: in compatibility
mode it is supposed to be completely interchangable with
standard TeX. In extended mode several new primitives are
added that facilitate (among other things) bidirectional
typesetting.
An extended mode format is generated by prefixing the name
of the source file for the format with an asterisk (*).
Such formats are often prefixed with an `e', hence etex as
the extended version of tex and elatex as the extended
version of latex. However, eplain is an exception to this
rule.
The einitex and evirtex commands are e-TeX's analogues to
the initex and virtex commands. In this installation,
they are symlinks to the etex executable.
e-TeX's handling of its command-line arguments is similar
to that of TeX.
OPTIONS
This version of e-TeX understands the following command
line options.
--efmt format
Use format as the name of the format to be used,
instead of the name by which e-TeX was called or a
%& line.
--file-line-error-style
Print error messages in the form file:line:error
which is similar to the way many compilers format
them.
--help Print help message and exit.
--ini Be einitex, for dumping formats; this is implicitly
true if the program is called as einitex.
--interaction mode
Sets the interaction mode. The mode can be one of
batchmode, nonstopmode, scrollmode, and errorstop-
mode. The meaning of these modes is the same as
that of the corresponding \commands.
--ipc Send DVI output to a socket as well as the usual
output file. Whether this option is available is
the choice of the installer.
--ipc-start
As --ipc, and starts the server at the other end as
well. Whether this option is available is the
choice of the installer.
--jobname name
Use name for the job name, instead of deriving it
from the name of the input file.
--kpathsea-debug bitmask
Sets path searching debugging flags according to
the bitmask. See the Kpathsea manual for details.
--maketex fmt
Enable mktexfmt, where fmt must be one of tex or
tfm.
--mltex
Enable MLTeX extensions.
--no-maketex fmt
Disable mktexfmt, where fmt must be one of tex or
tfm.
--output-comment string
Use string for the DVI file comment instead of the
date.
--parse-first-line
If the first line of the main input file begins
with %& parse it to look for a dump name or a
--translate-file option.
--progname name
Pretend to be program name. This affects both the
format used and the search paths.
--recorder
Enable the filename recorder. This leaves a trace
of the files opened for input and output in a file
with extension .fls.
--shell-escape
Enable the \write18{command} construct. The com-
mand can be any Bourne shell command. This con-
struct is normally disallowed for security reasons.
--translate-file tcxname
Use the tcxname translation table.
--version
Print version information and exit.
ENVIRONMENT
See the Kpathsearch library documentation (the `Path spec-
ifications' node) for precise details of how the environ-
ment variables are used. The kpsewhich utility can be
used to query the values of the variables.
One caveat: In most e-TeX formats, you cannot use ~ in a
filename you give directly to e-TeX, because ~ is an
active character, and hence is expanded, not taken as part
of the filename. Other programs, such as Metafont, do not
have this problem.
TEXMFOUTPUT
Normally, e-TeX puts its output files in the cur-
rent directory. If any output file cannot be
opened there, it tries to open it in the directory
specified in the environment variable TEXMFOUTPUT.
There is no default value for that variable. For
example, if you say tex paper and the current
directory is not writable, if TEXMFOUTPUT has the
value /tmp, e-TeX attempts to create /tmp/paper.log
(and /tmp/paper.dvi, if any output is produced.)
TEXINPUTS
Search path for \input and \openin files. This
should probably start with ``.'', so that user
files are found before system files. An empty path
component will be replaced with the paths defined
in the texmf.cnf file. For example, set TEXINPUTS
to ".:/home/usr/tex:" to prepend the current
direcory and ``/home/user/tex'' to the standard
search path.
TEXFONTS
Search path for font metric (.tfm) files.
TEXFORMATS
Search path for format files.
TEXPOOL
search path for einitex internal strings.
TEXEDIT
Command template for switching to editor. The
default, usually vi, is set when e-TeX is compiled.
FILES
The location of the files mentioned below varies from sys-
tem to system. Use the kpsewhich utility to find their
locations.
etex.pool
Encoded text of e-TeX's messages.
texfonts.map
Filename mapping definitions.
*.tfm Metric files for e-TeX's fonts.
*.efmt Predigested e-TeX format (.efmt) files.
BUGS
This version of e-TeX implements a number of optional
extensions. In fact, many of these extensions conflict to
a greater or lesser extent with the definition of e-TeX.
When such extensions are enabled, the banner printed when
e-TeX starts is changed to print e-TeXk instead of e-TeX.
This version of e-TeX fails to trap arithmetic overflow
when dimensions are added or subtracted. Cases where this
occurs are rare, but when it does the generated DVI file
will be invalid.
SEE ALSOtex(1), mf(1).
Web2C 7.4.5 10 November 2001 ETEX(1)
