[texhax] Some questions about plain TeX and LaTeX

[Francisco Villafañe]

Dear People of TeXlist:
                                 I would like to do some questions about TeX and LaTeX
and I hope somebody could answer (if it´s not much time).

1) How can I do to typeset accented vocals and "ñ" in standard TeX whitout using control characters. I mean, something similar to LaTeX imputenc that allows to type á instead o \´a or \´{a}. I want to do the same but in plain TeX. Is that possible?

2) In LaTeX, command \parbox is given this way: \parbox[position]{width}{text}. My question is... Is there a way to control not only the width of the box but also it´s height?

Thanks in advance,
Francisco Villafañe
Buenos Aires, Argentina