Re: hitex format 2026

Replying to my own message.

The plain hitex format builds if you load fewer hyphenation patterns.

It's not really possible to build latex with the current binary,  UTF-8
input produces single token characters so the classic-tex branch of text
handling is not an option however \Uchar and \Ucharcat are not implemented
so there is no expandable way to generate character tokens (the pdftex
branch can pre-build all 256 tokens but that's not really an option here)

Would it be possible to add \Uchar and \Ucharcat this time round, or
failing that could we consider rolling back the hitex binaries to
the tl2025 versions, and re-introducing them later with more
complete Unicode support?

David


On Sun, 8 Feb 2026 at 12:07, David Carlisle <[email protected]> wrote:

>
> The pretest news says that there is no hilatex as format changes are
> needed but there doesn't appear to be a plain hitex either? I get
>
> $ hitex
> This is HiTeX 2.0, TeX version 3.141592653 (TeX Live 2026) (preloaded
> format=hitex)
> **\relax
>
> kpathsea: Running mktexfmt hitex
> mktexfmt: mktexfmt is using the following fmtutil.cnf files (in precedence
> order):
> mktexfmt:   /usr/local/texlive/2026/texmf-dist/web2c/fmtutil.cnf
> mktexfmt: mktexfmt is using the following fmtutil.cnf file for writing
> changes:
> mktexfmt:   /home/davidc/.texlive2026/texmf-config/web2c/fmtutil.cnf
> mktexfmt [INFO]: writing formats under
> /usr/local/texlive/2026/texmf-var/web2c
> mktexfmt [INFO]: Did not find entry for byfmt=hitex skipped
> mktexfmt [INFO]: disabled formats: 3
> mktexfmt [INFO]: not selected formats: 52
> mktexfmt [INFO]: total formats: 55
> mktexfmt [INFO]: executable location:
> /usr/local/texlive/2026/bin/x86_64-linux/mktexfmt
> mktexfmt [INFO]: exiting with status 0
> I can't find a format file!
>
> If I try to make a format I get
>
> hitex --etex --ini hitex.ini
>
> ! TeX capacity exceeded, sorry [character code in pattern=12287].
> l.60 ...0^^ba^^d1^^82^^d0^^b0^^cc^^817^^ea^^99^^8b
>
> so for both plain and latex it seems to be the new utf-8 support confusing
> things, but
> I'm not sure where yet?
>
> David
>
>