fmtutil.cnf(5) File Formats Manual fmtutil.cnf(5)
NAME
fmtutil.cnf - configuration file for fmtutil
DESCRIPTION
The fmtutil.cnf file contains the configuration information for fmtu-
til(8). Each line contains the name of the format (e.g., ``tex´´, ``la-
tex´´, ``omega´´), the name of the engine that is used by that format
(e.g., ``tex´´, ``etex´´, ``omega´´), the pattern file (e.g., lan-
guage.dat, language.def), and any arguments (name of an .ini file).
Fields are separated by whitespace and complete lines can be commented
out with ``#´´. The ``pattern file´´ field cannot be used to define a
file that is used while building the format. It tells fmtutil which
files (separated by commas) the format creation procedure reads and it
has an effect to the options --showhyphen and --byhyphen. If the format
has no way to customize hyphenation, a ``-´´ can be used to indicate
this.
NOTES
The tex(1) and amstex(1) formats always load hyphen.tex. No customiza-
tion by a pattern file is available for these formats. Therefore, the
pattern-file field for the tex and amstex is usually indicated to be
empty (``-´´).
You can, however, build customized formats on top of plain tex(1) or am-
stex(1) by using bplain.tex instead of plain.tex (b for the Babel sys-
tem). See, for example, the bplain.ini file for the bplain format).
etex(1) loads language.def, not language.dat.
Symbolic links to the correct engines (e.g., bplain -> tex) are gener-
ated by the texlinks(8) script. Remember to run texlinks(8) if you run
fmtutil(8) yourself, rather than using the FORMATS option in texcon-
fig(8).
FILES
fmtutil.cnf
default configuration file
language.dat
hyphenation pattern file
language.def
hyphenation pattern file
language.dat.lua
hyphenation pattern file
SEE ALSO
amstex(1), etex(1), fmtutil(8), tex(1), texconfig(8), texlinks(8).
<https://tug.org/texlive/scripts-sys-user.html>
BUGS
Email bug reports to <https://lists.tug.org/tex-k> (public mailing
list).
AUTHOR
fmtutil and fmtutil.cnf was originally written by Thomas Esser.
This manual page was written by C.M. Connelly for the Debian GNU/Linux
system. It is now maintained as part of TeX Live.
TeX Live 10 February 2025 fmtutil.cnf(5)
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