ETEX(1)

🎀 NAME 🎀

okay so this is the manual page for etex (etex - extended (plain) TeX) 💖 it lives in the General Commands Manual, so you know it's serious 🧚

🫶 SYNOPSIS 🫶

etex [options] [&format] [file|\commands]

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

okay so etex runs the e-TeX typesetter on a file, and by default it makes file.dvi as the output 📄 if your file has no extension, .tex gets slapped onto the end automatically ✨ you can also skip the filename and type a set of e-TeX commands instead, and the first one has to start with a backslash 🔥

if you use an &format argument, e-TeX grabs a different set of precompiled commands from format.fmt 🦋 but honestly it's usually better to just use the -fmt format option instead 💜

e-TeX is the first real result of an international research & development project called the NTS Project 🌈 it got started under the aegis of DANTE e.V. back in 1992 🌸 the whole goal is to keep the spirit and philosophy of TeX alive and kicking, while still respecting Knuth's wish that TeX should stay frozen 🧊 (respect, honestly)

e-TeX can run in two modes 👑 in compatibility mode it's supposed to be completely interchangeable with standard TeX 🫶 in extended mode a bunch of new primitives get added, which help with (among other things) bidirectional typesetting 🔥

an extended mode format gets made by putting an asterisk (*) in front of the name of the source file for the format ⭐

and e-TeX's handling of its command-line arguments is basically the same as the other TeX programs in the web2c implementation 🍓

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

okay this version of e-TeX understands the following command line options, so let's get into them 💖

• -fmt format — use format as the format name, instead of the name e-TeX was called by or a %& line 🦋
• -enc — turns on the encTeX extensions 🌸 this only works together with -ini, and if you want the full documentation for them, check http://www.olsak.net/enctex.html 🔗
• -etex — turns on the e-TeX extensions ✨ only works together with -ini 💜
• -file-line-error — error messages come out as file:line:error, which is pretty similar to how a lot of compilers print theirs 🙈
• -no-file-line-error — nope, turns off that file:line:error error style 🚫
• -file-line-error-style — this is the old name for -file-line-error 👵
• -halt-on-error — exits with an error code the moment an error shows up during processing 💀
• -help — prints a help message and then exits 🧚
• -ini — starts in INI mode, which is what you use to dump formats 🍓 INI mode can typeset, but no format is preloaded, so basic stuff like setting catcodes might be needed 🫠
• -interaction mode — sets the interaction mode 💅 the mode can be batchmode, nonstopmode, scrollmode, or errorstopmode ✨ they mean the same thing as the matching \commands 🎀
• -ipc — sends DVI output to a socket as well as the usual output file 🔌 whether you actually get this option is up to the installer 🤷‍♀️
• -ipc-start — same as -ipc, but it also starts the server on the other end 🚀 again, the installer decides if this one is available 💜
• -jobname name — uses name as the job name, instead of making one up from the input file's name 🦋
• -kpathsea-debug bitmask — sets the path searching debugging flags based on the bitmask 🧐 for the details, go read the Kpathsea manual 📖
• -mktex fmt — turns on mktexfmt, where fmt has to be either tex or tfm 🛠️
• -mltex — turns on the MLTeX extensions 🌈 only works together with -ini ✨
• -no-mktex fmt — turns mktexfmt off, where fmt has to be either tex or tfm 🙅‍♀️
• -output-comment string — uses string in the DVI file comment instead of the date 📝
• -output-directory directory — writes output files into directory instead of the current directory 📂 input files get looked up in directory first, and then along the normal search path 🔍
• -parse-first-line — if the first line of the main input file starts with %&, it gets parsed to look for a dump name or a -translate-file option 👀
• -no-parse-first-line — disables parsing that first line of the main input file 🙅‍♀️
• -progname name — pretends to be the program name 🎭 this changes both the format that gets used and the search paths 🛤️
• -recorder — turns on the filename recorder 📼 it leaves a trail of every file opened for input and output in a file with the .fls extension 🕵️‍♀️
• -shell-escape — enables the \write18{command} construct 💻 the command can be any shell command 😳 this construct is normally disallowed for security reasons, so be careful bestie 🔐
• -no-shell-escape — disables the \write18{command} construct, even if the texmf.cnf file has it turned on ⛔
• -src-specials — inserts source specials into the DVI file ✨
• -src-specials where — inserts source specials in certain places of the DVI file 📍 where is a comma-separated value list, and the options are cr, display, hbox, math, par, parent, or vbox 🧩
• -translate-file tcxname — uses the tcxname translation table to set the mapping of input characters and the re-mapping of output characters 🔁
• -default-translate-file tcxname — basically -translate-file, except a %& line is allowed to overrule this setting 💅
• -version — prints version information and exits 🎀

🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

okay so for the precise details on how the environment variables get used, check out the Kpathsearch library documentation (the Path specifications' node) 📚 and if you want to query what the variables are set to, the kpsewhich` utility is your bestie 🔍

⚠️ one caveat!! in most e-TeX formats, you cannot use ~ in a filename you give directly to e-TeX 😭 that's because ~ is an active character, so it gets expanded instead of being treated as part of the filename 💀 other programs, like Metafont, don't have this problem 🙄

• TEXMFOUTPUT — normally e-TeX puts its output files in the current directory 📂 if an output file can't be opened there, it tries the directory set in TEXMFOUTPUT instead 🫶 there's no default value for that variable 🤷‍♀️ for example, if you say etex paper and the current directory isn't writable, and TEXMFOUTPUT is /tmp, e-TeX tries to create /tmp/paper.log (and /tmp/paper.dvi, if any output is produced) 🦋 TEXMFOUTPUT also gets checked for input files, since TeX often generates files that need to be read later 🔁 for input, no suffixes (like ``.tex'') get added by default, so the input name is just checked exactly as given ✨
• TEXINPUTS — the search path for \input and \openin files 🛤️ it should start with ., so user files get found before system files 🏠 an empty path component gets replaced with the paths defined in the texmf.cnf file 🧩 for example, setting TEXINPUTS to .:/home/user/tex: prepends the current directory and ``/home/user/tex'' to the standard search path 💖
• TEXFORMATS — the search path for format files 📦
• TEXPOOL — the search path for etex internal strings 🧵
• TEXEDIT — the command template for switching to an editor ✏️ the default, usually vi, gets set when e-TeX is compiled 🛠️
• TFMFONTS — the search path for font metric (.tfm) files 🔤

📁 FILES 📁

the location of the files below varies from system to system, so use the kpsewhich utility to find where they live 🔍

• etex.pool — text file with e-TeX's internal strings 🧵
• texfonts.map — filename mapping definitions 🗺️
• *.tfm — metric files for e-TeX's fonts 🔤
• *.fmt — predigested e-TeX format (.fmt) files 📦

🙈 NOTES 🙈

okay so starting with version 1.40, pdfTeX incorporates the e-TeX extensions 💜 which means in this installation eTeX might just be a symbolic link to pdfTeX 🔗 see pdftex(1) for that one 🫶 also, this manual page is not meant to be exhaustive 🙃 the complete documentation for this version of e-TeX lives in the info manual Web2C: A TeX implementation 📖

💀 BUGS 💀

this version of e-TeX implements a bunch of optional extensions 🌈 but honestly, many of them conflict to a greater or lesser extent with the definition of e-TeX 😬 when those extensions are enabled, the banner printed at startup changes from e-TeX to e-TeXk 🎀

⚠️ this version of e-TeX doesn't trap arithmetic overflow when dimensions get added or subtracted 😭 it's rare, but when it happens the generated DVI file will be invalid 💀

🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

pdftex(1), tex(1), mf(1) 💖

👑 AUTHORS 👑

e-TeX was developed by Peter Breitenlohner and the NTS team 🫶 Peter later kept developing it outside of the team 🌸

TeX was designed by Donald E. Knuth, who implemented it using his Web system for Pascal programs 👑 it was ported to Unix at Stanford by Howard Trickey, and at Cornell by Pavel Curtis 🧚 the version that comes with the Unix TeX distribution now is the one generated by the Web to C system (web2c), which was originally written by Tomas Rokicki and Tim Morgan 💜

the encTeX extensions were written by Petr Olsak ✨

that's the whole tea, bestie!! 🌈 this page is from Web2C 2015, last touched 1 March 2011, and it's the ETEX(1) page 💅🎀 love you, go be a main character 🦋💖