TeXipedia

tex

Provides a foundational typesetting engine and macro processor for transforming plain text into professionally formatted documents.

Overview

Represents the core typesetting system that revolutionized digital document preparation, particularly for technical and mathematical content. This sophisticated engine processes macro definitions to convert source text into precisely formatted output.

  • Forms the foundation for modern typesetting systems including pdfTeX, XeTeX, and LuaTeX.
  • Excels at mathematical typesetting with unmatched precision and consistency.
  • Offers complete programmatic control over document formatting through its macro language.
  • Widely used in academic publishing, scientific documentation, and professional typesetting.
  • Known for its stability, backward compatibility, and ability to produce identical output across different platforms.

The system integrates with Metafont for font handling and has maintained its position as the gold standard for technical document preparation since its creation by Donald Knuth.

Getting Started

The tex package is not a LaTeX package that you include with \usepackage, but rather the core typesetting engine that powers the entire TeX system. TeX itself is a sophisticated typesetting program developed by Donald Knuth.

To use TeX directly (rather than LaTeX, which is built on top of TeX):

  1. Create a plain TeX file with the .tex extension
  2. Write your document using TeX primitives and plain TeX macros
  3. Compile with: tex document.tex

However, most users today use higher-level formats like LaTeX rather than plain TeX directly.