Tagged Questions
12
votes
3answers
360 views
How to compile the source code of TeX
I am more and more interested in the system TeX (and LaTeX) and I want to study it more deeply. I am not telling that I want to learn how to use it, but I want to understand its mechanism now.
The ...
34
votes
2answers
570 views
Electronic version of Knuth's “TeXbook”?
I have a printed copy of the TeXbook (from D.E. Knuth) at home. Now that I travel a lot, I don't want to take my library with me every time. Question:
Is there a legal way to obtain (=purchase) a PDF ...
6
votes
1answer
101 views
How to not have widows and orphans without using raggedbottom
I know I can set \clubpenalty and \widowpenalty to 10 000 to make them “really bad”, but then TeX sees it equally bad to cut the page short when there is no vertical stretch (i.e. \parskip=0pt), and ...
4
votes
2answers
61 views
Change display style in xlop package
I recently discovered the package xlop to typeset automatically elementary school calculations. Using this for division for example like this, gives the output below.
\documentclass{article}
...
1
vote
0answers
36 views
Is there an interface to call the Hyphenation Algorithm in plain TeX?
As the title said. Which TeX engine can do that? Knuth TeX, XeTeX, pdfTeX, or LuaTeX?
10
votes
1answer
81 views
How to get the natural width of the last box in a paragraph?
I want to get the natural width of the last line in a paragraph. For example, the last line of the following paragraph
Georg Friedrich Bernhard Riemann (September 17, 1826 – July 20, 1866) was an ...
10
votes
1answer
117 views
How to install or replace fonts in old TeX files?
I got interested in a research paper from 1991, which I cannot get an electronic online version of. The author was kind enough to send me his tex sources, but is himself unable to produce a pdf file ...
13
votes
2answers
255 views
What is “plain TeX”?
I occasionally see a statement that plain TeX is not the same as TeX, because plain TeX is already a format.
What is plain TeX, and what is the difference to TeX proper?
Some answers are here (The ...
15
votes
3answers
403 views
\string command behavior - Plain TeX
I would like to learn Plain TeX and I'm reading Knuth's "The TeXBook". At Chapter 7, Knuth talks about the \string command and how it converts control sequences into lists of characters tokens.
Why ...
10
votes
2answers
261 views
How to include eps files in Plain TeX?
The title stands for itself.
If it is not possible, how does LaTeX import an EPS file using \includegraphics?
12
votes
2answers
349 views
The revenge of the vboxes
Yes, they're back. With a vengeance. Those pesky little buggers we call \vboxes which I've fought against previously. (And Bruno, too.)
\parskip=0pt
\def\unquo{\unvbox0\smallskip}
...
5
votes
1answer
240 views
Outputting a spread at a time
I think I remember Stephan Lehmke writing here somewhere in a comment about outputting a spread at a time instead of page.
That got me thinking; does that mean something like:
\output={\shipout\vbox ...
11
votes
1answer
480 views
From LaTeX with pdflatex to plain TeX
I've always wanted to try plain TeX instead of LaTeX. I can use plain but I'm not able to use correctly the fonts and I'm not able to use the french hyphenation. I would to know how to do this with ...
1
vote
1answer
160 views
Unexpected conditional branch with \ifdim
I have a problem with the following code:
\newtoks\sectoks
\sectoks={\noindent}
\newtoks\subsubjectstyle
\subsubjectstyle={\emitsectglue 1\the\sectoks}
\newtoks\postsectoks
...
9
votes
1answer
113 views
Why does the list of recent contributions contain exactly two boxes?
In the transcript of
\nonstopmode
\tenrm
\vsize=2cm
\output={\shipout\vbox{
\showlists
\unvbox255
}}
\hbox{blah}
\hbox{blah}
\hbox{blah}
\hbox{blah}
\hbox{blah}
\hbox{blah}
\hbox{blah}
...
5
votes
1answer
103 views
Read manuscript in to output
I want to put my source plain TeX file in the output of the same plain TeX file.
As I remember coming through a macro, that can put a file's content in to the output, but only \input comes to mind. ...
15
votes
1answer
213 views
Why are \new… defined as \outer in the plain TeX format?
In plain.tex, D.E.Knuth decided to define as \outer all the macros which allocate registers: \newcount, \newdimen, \newskip, \newread, \newwrite. This forbids them from entering the argument of ...
6
votes
3answers
162 views
How to define a macro containing a tabbed line (\+…\cr)?
\def\test{\+test\cr}
\test
\vfill
\eject
The above gives error:
...
Runaway definition?
->
! Forbidden control sequence found while scanning definition of \test.
...
5
votes
2answers
355 views
Wrapping \obeylines with \halign into a macro
In the TeXbook, Knuth gives an example:
Are you tired of typing \cr? You can get plain TEX to insert an automatic \cr at the end of each input line in the following way:
\begingroup \let\par=\cr ...
3
votes
2answers
431 views
setting \tabskip in a repeating \halign preamble
Is it somehow possible to set the \tabskip glue to zero for the first and last column in a repeated \halign?
Eg.
% tabskip=0pt
\halign{&#\hfil\tabskip1em plus1em minus.5em\cr
...
7
votes
5answers
973 views
Can I see a plain TeX source file please?
all the LaTeX-tutorials tell me how LaTeX is an extention simplifying the building of TeX documents. Understandably, no one uses plain TeX anymore, right?
But I seem to learn better when I grasp the ...
23
votes
4answers
2k views
Is it actually illegal to TeX `texbook.tex`? [closed]
At the top of texbook.tex, it is written:
% This manual is copyright (C) 1984 by the American Mathematical Society.
% All rights are reserved!
% The file is distributed only for people to see its ...
11
votes
2answers
469 views
Is there a printable version of a reference manual for all TeX primitives?
Everywhere in the TeX community, I see suggestions like \parskip, \obeylines, \parindent, etc. I'd be surprised not to find them even in the most basic LaTeX packages. So I figured they must be deeper ...
18
votes
1answer
618 views
Why do the definitions of \quad, etc. have \relax in them?
Plain Tex defines \quad so:
\def\quad{\hskip1em\relax}
Why is the \relax there? It's usually used as a token that can't be expanded, serving as a "do nothing" operation after macro expansion is ...
4
votes
2answers
277 views
How do I create a pdf file from old tex code?
How can I convert the old tex file below into a pdf?
I would very much like to know as I have a few other files that I would like to convert.
Thanks.
PS: I selected the shortest example I had to ...
