ALEPH(1)

📦 version 2026.0, in alpine 3.24

okay so this is the ALEPH(1) manual, and it's giving extended TeX with Unicode and bidirectional typesetting realness 💅✨ buckle up bestie, we're getting into it.

✨ NAME ✨

aleph — extended TeX with Unicode and bidirectional typesetting support 💖👑

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

aleph [options] [&format]  [ file [ more-input ] | [ \more-input ]

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

Run the Aleph typesetter on file, usually creating file.dvi. If the file argument has no extension, .tex will be appended to it. See tex(1) for details of command-line parsing. literally just the standard TeX file-handling vibe, no cap.

🫶 okay so real talk: Aleph is no longer being actively developed; see LuaTeX for current activity with Unicode and TeX. Aleph is still maintained and distributed for the sake of supporting existing documents. so it's iconic but retired, like a legendary pop star doing a residency 💅

Aleph is essentially the extended TeX engine Omega, plus the etex(1) extensions. Omega was developed starting in the 1990s to support Unicode and bidirectional typesetting. To support this, it implements "Omega translation process" files (.otp), which are compiled into "Omega compiled process" files (.ocp). the way that this is a whole pipeline, iykyk.

Omega, and hence Aleph, also has its own extended font formats, analogous to TeX's: Omega metric files (.ofm) and Omega virtual fonts (.ovf), along with their corresponding human-readable "property list" forms (.opl and .ovp). fancy font files fr fr 🎀

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

  • See tex(1).
  • The -enc, -mltex, -translate-file, and -8bit options are not present in Aleph.
  • There are no Aleph-specific options. that's it, that's the section 💀

🦋 ENVIRONMENT 🦋

💀 BUGS 💀

🍓 FILES 🍓

  • $TEXMFMAIN/tex/plain/config/aleph.ini — The driver file that builds the Aleph format file, aleph.fmt, in TeX Live. this is the main character file right here 👑

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

Aleph package page on CTAN: https://ctan.org/pkg/aleph Omega package page on CTAN: https://ctan.org/pkg/omega

Clearly, this manual page is a bare minimum. Unfortunately, there is no comprehensive documentation on either Omega or Aleph. 😭 it's giving "we tried our best".

The Web2c (https://tug.org/web2c) and Kpathsea (https://tug.org/kpathsea) manuals have brief mentions of the programs and file formats.

Perhaps most usefully, a number of articles were published in TUGboat on their development and usage, mostly by John Plaice and Yannis Haralambous: https://tug.org/TUGboat. obsessed with the TUGboat lore 🚢

Other than that, use the source. periodt. 💅

👑 AUTHORS 👑

TeX was created by Donald E. Knuth. The primary authors of the Aleph enhancements are John Plaice and Yannis Haralambous, as they are the authors of Omega. The e-TeX extensions were primarily written by Peter Breitenlohner, and added to Aleph by Giuseppe Bilotta. legends only ✨

Public discussion list and bug reports: https://lists.tug.org/tex-k

This page is from Web2C 2026, dated 15 January 2026, and it's the ALEPH(1) manual. later bestie, stay iconic 🫶💖

📦 where this page comes from