Compiling my own mktexfmt

Question

I'm trying to compile my own version of pdftex which works fine. However, I must compile my own format file (fmt) for that. This should be done with mktexfmt. My problem is that I don't know where to find the souce code for mktexfmt (for Linux).

Can anybody give me a hint where to find it?

OK, looks like I need a small crash course in the LaTeX architecture.

This is what I understand now:

I don't need mktexfmt to create a format, I can use pdftex -ini -etex
A format is necessary to teach pdftex to understand latex
When I have "teached" pdftex how to understand latex I can parse latex files with pdftex and create pdf files from this

Is this correct?

If so, where do I get a .tex file to create a format? This ctan package looks good, but I cannot download it.

Sorry for beeing so dumb, but until now I only created nice pdfs with latex but I never got that deep into its architecture.

EDIT: I don't see the relevance of why I want to do this. But OK it's because I want to port PDFTeX to Javascript using emscripten. Does this help?

If you are compiling your own pdfTeX, then I'd imagine you are better off with the traditional approach of pdftex --ini <file>, maybe with * before the file name if you want the e-TeX extensions enabled. (You don't say which format you are after.) — Joseph Wright, Jan 07 '13 at 13:18
I'm still not clear why you need to create your own format files, or to compile pdfTeX, both of which are pretty unusual tasks. — Joseph Wright, Jan 07 '13 at 17:40
About the addition: you need quite a big part of a TeX distribution, if you want to use (La)TeX for serious work. So compiling it without the kpathsea library and without an accompanying TeX distribution does not make much sense. — egreg, Jan 07 '13 at 22:23
Have the sources of mktexfmt become available since this question was asked?
I would also be interested in studying them, as this has become a recent development topic for LaTeXML. — Deyan, Jan 25 '23 at 12:21

score 7 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 07 '13 at 13:52

7

If the TeX code for the format is myformat.tex, then

pdftex -ini -etex -output-format=pdf myformat

will produce the file myformat.fmt that you can place anywhere the TeX programs would search for formats; for instance in

~/texmf/web2c/pdftex/

The options:

-ini means "be INITEX" (mandatory for building a format)
-etex means "enable the e-TeX extensions (recommended)
-output-format=pdf means "output will be PDF"

answered Jan 07 '13 at 13:52

egreg

1,121,712

I would also recommend you to use the -enc (encTeX extension) argument, which allows you to enter your whole text as UTF-8 (with some configuration beforehand) – RD6137 Jan 07 '13 at 15:01
What is myformat.tex and what is it supposed to contain? Is the source file for pdftex.fmt included in e.g. the texlive source tree? – corwin.amber Jan 26 '20 at 16:24

Compiling my own mktexfmt

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