[Tex/LaTex] Creating a Plain TeX document that’s formatted like a LaTeX “report”

plain-tex

Hey I want a report format, how can I spcecify in Plain TeX that it is a report, like in LaTeX we have 

\documentclass{report}

How can this be done for a Plain TeX document? And, how do I add images in a Plain TeX document?

Best Answer

It depends on the fact what do you mean to do by "report" document class. For example, if you need only write:

\documentclass{report}
\begin{document}
Hello world.
\end{document}

then the same could be done in plain TeX by:

Hello world.\bye

But if you need something more special (from LaTeX features) then you need to program this by your own macros.

But there is another alternative. You can use OPmac macro package for example. This macro package provides similar features like LaTeX for plain TeX users (references, hyperlinks, colors, graphics, font managing, ams-math, TOC plus index auto-generating, bib. references, etc.). The advantage is that the macros from OPmac are much more simple than LaTeX equivalents, so you can start with inspiration for your own macros here. Second advantage is that the markup language for authors are more simple without many \begin{foo}...\end{foo}, without many curly braces etc. The markup doesn't hide the problematic of core TeX, but it cooperates with it.

I know many people, they tried plain TeX + OPmac and they found that it is more comfortable and more simple than using LaTeX. For example, all OPmac features are documented at only 16 pages (for users) and there is detail technical documentation of all macros.

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