The simplest way to install Eplain is simply to install the file ‘eplain.tex’ in a directory where TeX will find it. What that directory is obviously depends on your operating system and TeX installation. I personally install ‘eplain.tex’ in a directory ‘/usr/local/lib/texmf/tex/plain’.
If you want, you can also create a format (‘.fmt’)
file for Eplain, which will eliminate the time spent reading the macro
source file with \input. You do this by issuing a sequence of
Unix commands something like this:
prompt$ touch eplain.aux prompt$ initex This is TeX, ... **&plain eplain (eplain.tex) *\dump ... messages ...
You must make sure that ‘eplain.aux’ exists before you run ‘initex’; otherwise, warning messages about undefined labels will never be issued.
You then have to install the resulting ‘eplain.fmt’ in some system
directory or set an environment variable to tell TeX how to find it.
I install the format files in ‘/usr/local/lib/texmf/ini’; the
environment variable for the Web2C port of TeX to Unix is
TEXFORMATS.
Some implementations of TeX (including Web2C) use the name by which TeX is invoked to determine what format to read. For them, you should make a link to the ‘virtex’ program named ‘etex’, and then install the format file with the name ‘etex.fmt’. This lets users invoke TeX as ‘etex’ and get the format file read automatically, without having to say ‘&eplain’.
For convenience, the file ‘etex.tex’ in the distribution directory
does \input eplain and then \dump, so that if you replace
‘eplain’ with ‘etex’ in the example above, the format file
will end up with the right name.
The install target in the ‘Makefile’ does all this properly
for Unix systems and Web2C. You may have to change the pathnames.
Under emtex, ‘eaj@acpub.duke.edu’ says that
tex386 -i ^&plain eplain \dump
produces a format file.
This document was generated on January 15, 2023 using texi2html 5.0.