fmtutil.cnf(5)

✨ NAME ✨

fmtutil.cnf(5) is giving configuration file for fmtutil 💖 That's the whole vibe of this page, bestie.

🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

okay so the fmtutil.cnf file holds all the config info for fmtutil(8) 🧚 Each line has the name of the format (like tex´´, latex´´, or omega´´), the name of the engine that format uses (like tex´´, etex´´, or omega´´), the pattern file (like language.dat or language.def), and any arguments (the name of an .ini file).

Fields are separated by whitespace, and you can comment out a whole line with ``#´´ 🫶 The pattern file field cannot be used to define a file that gets used while building the format. It just tells fmtutil which files (separated by commas) the format creation procedure reads, and it affects the options --showhyphen and --byhyphen 🔥 If the format has no way to customize hyphenation, put a - there to show that. no cap.

💅 NOTES 💅

The tex(1) and amstex(1) formats always load hyphen.tex, and no customization by a pattern file is available for them 💀 So the pattern-file field for tex and amstex is usually left empty, marked with -.

You can, however, build customized formats on top of plain tex(1) or amstex(1) by using bplain.tex instead of plain.tex (the b is for the Babel system) ✨ See, for example, the bplain.ini file for the bplain format.

etex(1) loads language.def, not language.dat 🌸

Symbolic links to the correct engines (like bplain -> tex) get generated by the texlinks(8) script. Remember to run texlinks(8) if you run fmtutil(8) yourself, instead of using the FORMATS option in texconfig(8) 🙈

🦋 FILES 🦋

• fmtutil.cnf — the default configuration file
• language.dat — hyphenation pattern file
• language.def — hyphenation pattern file
• language.dat.lua — hyphenation pattern file

🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

amstex(1), etex(1), fmtutil(8), tex(1), texconfig(8), texlinks(8).

https://tug.org/texlive/scripts-sys-user.html

🐛 BUGS 🐛

Email bug reports to <https://lists.tug.org/tex-k> (public mailing list). Bugs are not something to keep to yourself, bestie 😭

👑 AUTHOR 👑

fmtutil and fmtutil.cnf were originally written by Thomas Esser ✨

This manual page was written by C.M. Connelly for the Debian GNU/Linux system. It's now maintained as part of TeX Live 🍓

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fmtutil.cnf(5) from TeX Live, dated 10 February 2025, brought to you by your favourite Unix nerd 💜🫶