[fptex] format file with several languages?

[Staszek Wawrykiewicz]

Jose Olivares <ghz@servidor.unam.mx> wrote:
> Could anybody please explain to me how to create a tex.fmt and a latex.fmt
> with hyphenation patterns for english, spanish and portuguese?

Part of this question was already answered. tex.fmt has only USEnglish 
patterns. It is canonical Plain format by D.E. Knuth.

Jose Carlos Oliveira Santos <jcsantos@fc.up.pt> wrote:
> OK, now I know the answer to your other question. Take the
> plain.tex file and save it under another name (plainpt.tex, for instance).
> Open it with a text editor; ... etc.

For Plain with other patterns loaded, try rather bplain:
1. Please modify language.dat, as was already explained, in the same
   manner as for latex. Note: you should modify the `active' copy of 
   that file, but it is so simple to find it: 
      kpsewhich language.dat 
   will show where it is
2. run:
     fmtutil --byfmt=bplain --dolinks
That's all! You can run `bplain file.tex' with your patterns.
The more interesting question is how your input can be interpreted
by such a format. Perhaps you can try somemething like:

%& --translate-file=il1-t1
in *the first line* of your file, so you can write your documents
in a *natural* way (iso8859-1, a.k.a. iso latin1), and it will be translated
into T1 (Cork) encoding used internaly by TeX with EC fonts. 
But how one can switch to that encoding in (b)Plain? That's the question...
Note, that without special macros which I do not know, input with
\~n, \'a, \^a etc. will destroy completely the hyphenation.
Some can answer: use better latex... ;-) But it is not serious answer,
if you prefer using Plain.

Staszek Wawrykiewicz
email: staw@gust.org.pl