[Tex/LaTex] How to compile the source code of TeX

plain-textex-core

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 first thing that I can imagine is to download its source code Plain Tex. But

…the current TeX software is written in WEB, a mixture of documentation written in TeX and a Pascal subset in order to ensure portability… (Wikipedia)

I am an amateur C programmer with a little experience of Win32 API, and I always use Microsoft Visual Studio to do programming.

I have totally no idea what to do next with the souce code above, for example, compile it and get outputs (on Windows and on Linux), use the outputs to compile a .tex file and get the output.

Can some expert(s) talk and explain a little about this beautiful sytem, or, at least, tutorials about how to build it, please?

Best Answer

You are linking there to plain.tex which is a file written in TeX not the source of tex-the-program (which is tex.web)

These days if you want to compile from source it is probably best to start with a full download of the texlive build sources.

The sources are at

http://www.tug.org/texlive/svn/

and that page has hints about where to start if you want to compile. See in particular:

http://www.tug.org/texlive/build.html

Good luck:-)

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] see a plain TeX source file please

Here's an example, taken from here.

% Plain TeX for a 1 page document

%% The lines between the two rows of %'s are more or less compulsory.
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

\magnification=\magstep1
\baselineskip=12pt
\hsize=6.3truein
\vsize=8.7truein
\font\footsc=cmcsc10 at 8truept
\font\footbf=cmbx10 at 8truept
\font\footrm=cmr10 at 10truept
\footline={\footsc the electronic journal of combinatorics
   {\footbf 16} (2009), \#R00\hfil\footrm\folio}

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%% The further structure of the front page need not be exactly as below,
%% but the header must contain the names and addresses of the authors
%% as well as the submission and acceptance dates.

\font\bigrm=cmr12 at 14pt
\centerline{\bigrm An elementary proof of the reconstruction conjecture}

\bigskip\bigskip

\centerline{D. Remifa\footnote*{Thanks to
  the editors of this wonderful journal!}}
\smallskip
\centerline{Department of Inconsequential Studies}
\centerline{Solatido College, North Kentucky, USA}
\centerline{\tt remifa@dis.solatido.edu}

\bigskip

\centerline{\footrm 
Submitted: Jan 1, 2009; Accepted: Jan 2, 2009; Published: Jan 3, 2009}
\centerline{\footrm Mathematics Subject Classifications: 05C88, 05C89}

\bigskip\bigskip

\centerline{\bf Abstract}
\smallskip
{\narrower\noindent
The reconstruction conjecture states that the multiset of unlabeled
vertex-deleted subgraphs of a graph determines the graph, provided it
has at least 3 vertices.  A version of the problem was first stated
by Stanis\l aw Ulam.  In this paper, we show that the conjecture can
be proved by elementary methods.  It is only necessary to integrate
the Lenkle potential of the Broglington manifold over the quantum
supervacillatory measure in order to reduce the set of possible
counterexamples to a small number (less than a trillion).  A simple
computer program that implements Pipletti's classification theorem
for torsion-free Aramaic groups with simplectic socles can then
finish the remaining cases.\par}

\bigskip

\beginsection 1. Introduction.

This is the start of the introduction.

\bye

Result:

enter image description here

[Tex/LaTex] the basic mechanism for writing something to an aux file

There is a user friendly LaTeX package: newfile. You can use it to read and write files easily. It provides normal file IO functions, and also verbatim file IO functions. It is more suitable for your example, than those low-level macros. The package document has some good examples.

A naive example (similar to table of contents):

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{newfile}
\newoutputstream{comment}
\openoutputfile{\jobname.comment}{comment}

\begin{document}

\section{Test}
text one
\addtostream{comment}{\noexpand\item comment one at page \thepage}

text two
\addtostream{comment}{\noexpand\item comment two}


\section{Comments}

\closeoutputstream{comment}
\begin{enumerate}
    \input{\jobname.comment}
\end{enumerate}

\end{document}

Macros will expand when write to file. It is very important to control the expansion. Some macros should not be expanded, like \item here; while some macros should be expanded, like \thepage and \thesection here.

In TeX, there are \newwrite, \openout, \immediate, \write, \closeout, \ifeof etc. A good resource is chapter 30 of TeX by Topic.

The same example using TeX primitives:

\documentclass{article}
\newwrite\commentfile
\openout\commentfile=\jobname.comment

\begin{document}

\section{Test}
text one
\write\commentfile{\noexpand\item comment one at page \thepage}

text two
\write\commentfile{\noexpand\item comment two in section \thesection}

\section{Comments}

\closeout\commentfile
\begin{enumerate}
    \input{\jobname.comment}
\end{enumerate}

\end{document}

In LaTeX kernel, which you can refer source2e, you can learn from \@starttoc, \@wirtefile, \addcontentsline (for contents) etc.

The same example (works like standard TOC):

\documentclass{article}

\makeatletter
\newcommand\addcommentitem[1]{%
  \write\@auxout{\noexpand\@writefile{comment}{\noexpand\item #1}}}
\newcommand\printcomment{%
  \section*{Comments}
  \begin{enumerate}
    \item[] Here are some comments:
    \@starttoc{comment}
  \end{enumerate}}
\makeatother

\begin{document}

\section{Test}
text one
\addcommentitem{comment one at page \thepage}

text two
\addcommentitem{comment two in section \thesection}

\printcomment

\end{document}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[Tex/LaTex] see a plain TeX source file please

[Tex/LaTex] the basic mechanism for writing something to an aux file

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