1ALEPH(1) General Commands Manual ALEPH(1)
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6 aleph - extended Unicode TeX
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9 aleph [options] [&format] [file|\commands]
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12 Run the Aleph typesetter on file, usually creating file.dvi. If the
13 file argument has no extension, ".tex" will be appended to it. Instead
14 of a filename, a set of Aleph commands can be given, the first of which
15 must start with a backslash. With a &format argument Aleph uses a dif‐
16 ferent set of precompiled commands, contained in format.fmt; it is usu‐
17 ally better to use the -fmt format option instead.
18 Aleph is a version of the TeX program modified for multilingual type‐
20 setting. It uses Unicode, and has additional primitives for (among
21 other things) bidirectional typesetting.
22 Aleph's command line options are similar to those of TeX.
24 Aleph is no longer being actively developed; see LuaTeX for current ac‐
26 tivity.
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29 Run aleph --help to see the complete list of options; this is not ex‐
30 haustive.
31 -cnf-line string
33 Parse string as a texmf.cnf configuration line. See the Kpath‐
34 sea manual.
35 --fmt format
37 Use format as the name of the format to be used, instead of the
38 name by which Aleph was called or a %& line.
39 --halt-on-error
41 Exit with an error code when an error is encountered during pro‐
42 cessing.
43 --help Print help message and exit.
45 --ini Be `initial' Aleph for dumping formats; this is implicitly true
47 if the program is called as inialeph.
48 --interaction mode
50 Sets the interaction mode. The mode can be one of batchmode,
51 nonstopmode, scrollmode, and errorstopmode. The meaning of
52 these modes is the same as that of the corresponding \commands.
53 --ipc Send DVI output to a socket as well as the usual output file.
55 Whether this option is available is the choice of the installer.
56 --ipc-start
58 As --ipc, and starts the server at the other end as well.
59 Whether this option is available is the choice of the installer.
60 --kpathsea-debug bitmask
62 Sets path searching debugging flags according to the bitmask.
63 See the Kpathsea manual for details.
64 --maketex fmt
66 Enable mktexfmt, where fmt must be one of tex or tfm.
67 --no-maketex fmt
69 Disable mktexfmt, where fmt must be one of tex or tfm.
70 --output-comment string
72 Use string for the DVI file comment instead of the date.
73 --output-directory directory
75 Write output files in directory instead of the current direc‐
76 tory. Look up input files in directory first, the along the
77 normal search path.
78 --parse-first-line
80 If the first line of the main input file begins with %& parse it
81 to look for a dump name.
82 --progname name
84 Pretend to be program name. This affects both the format used
85 and the search paths.
86 --recorder
88 Enable the filename recorder. This leaves a trace of the files
89 opened for input and output in a file with extension .ofl.
90 (This option is always on.)
91 --shell-escape
93 Enable the \write18{command} construct. The command can be any
94 Bourne shell command. By default, this construct is enabled in
95 a restricted mode, for security reasons.
96 --version
98 Print version information and exit.
99
101 See the Kpathsearch library documentation (the `Path specifications'
102 node) for precise details of how the environment variables are used.
103 The kpsewhich utility can be used to query the values of the variables.
104 One caveat: In most Aleph formats, you cannot use ~ in a filename you
106 give directly to Aleph, because ~ is an active character, and hence is
107 expanded, not taken as part of the filename. Other programs, such as
108 Metafont, do not have this problem.
109 TEXMFOUTPUT
111 Normally, Aleph puts its output files in the current directory.
112 If any output file cannot be opened there, it tries to open it
113 in the directory specified in the environment variable TEXMFOUT‐
114 PUT. There is no default value for that variable. For example,
115 if you say tex paper and the current directory is not writable,
116 if TEXMFOUTPUT has the value /tmp, Aleph attempts to create
117 /tmp/paper.log (and /tmp/paper.dvi, if any output is produced.)
118 TEXMFOUTPUT is also checked for input files, as TeX often gener‐
119 ates files that need to be subsequently read; for input, no suf‐
120 fixes (such as ``.tex'') are added by default, the input name is
121 simply checked as given.
122 TEXINPUTS
124 Search path for \input and \openin files. This should start
125 with ``.'', so that user files are found before system files.
126 An empty path component will be replaced with the paths defined
127 in the texmf.cnf file. For example, set TEXINPUTS to
128 ".:/home/user/tex:" to prepend the current directory and
129 ``/home/user/tex'' to the standard search path.
130 TEXEDIT
132 Command template for switching to editor. The default, usually
133 vi, is set when Aleph is compiled.
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136 This manual page is not meant to be exhaustive. The complete documen‐
137 tation for this version of Aleph can be found in the info manual Web2C:
138 A TeX implementation. See http://tug/org/web2c.
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141 This version of Aleph implements a number of optional extensions. In
142 fact, many of these extensions conflict to a greater or lesser extent
143 with the definition of Aleph. When such extensions are enabled, the
144 banner printed when Aleph starts is changed to print Alephk instead of
145 Aleph.
146 This version of Aleph fails to trap arithmetic overflow when dimensions
148 are added or subtracted. Cases where this occurs are rare, but when it
149 does the generated DVI file will be invalid.
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152 tex(1), mf(1)
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155 The primary authors of Aleph are John Plaice and Yannis Haralambous.
156Web2C 2023 6 August 2019 ALEPH(1)