mft(1) General Commands Manual mft(1)
NAME
mft - translate Metafont or MetaPost code to TeX for prettyprinting
SYNOPSIS
mft [options] source_file[.mf|.mp]
DESCRIPTION
The mft program creates a TeX file from a Metafont or MetaPost program.
It takes appropriate care of typographic details like page layout and
the use of indentation, italics, boldface, etc., as illustrated in the
book Computer Modern Typefaces by Donald Knuth.
Special conventions in Metafont and MetaPost comments allow you to
control things that would not otherwise come out right; section 1 of
the mft source program and the mft section in the Web2C manual explain
these rules.
The mft program uses an optional change file (which works just as the
change files to tangle(1) and weave(1) do) and one or several style
files (which are prepended to everything). If no style file is
specified, the style file plain.mft for Metafont, or mplain.mft for
MetaPost, is used. These files are specified via the options below.
The source_file, as well as any change and style files, are searched
for using the MFINPUTS (for Metafont) or MPINPUTS (for MetaPost) and
MFTINPUTS environment variables if you have set them, or else the
corresponding system defaults.
The output TeX file name is formed by using .tex in place of the
extension of source_file.
OPTIONS
See tex(1) for details of command-line parsing.
-change=change_file[.ch]
Apply the change file change_file to mf_file.
-metapost
Consider source_file to be a MetaPost source file; this is the
default if mf_file has the extension .mp.
-style=style_file[.mft]
Use the style file style_file instead of plain.mft or
mplain.mft; this option can be given more than once.
The standard -help and -version options are also supported.
FILES
mftmac.tex, mptmac.tex
TeX macros used by the output from mft for Metafont and MetaPost
input, respectively.
plain.mft, mplain.mft
Default style files.
cmbase.mft
Style file for Computer Modern.
e.mft Style file for Knuth's Volume E: Computer Modern Typefaces.
SEE ALSO
mf(1), mpost(1), weave(1).
Donald E. Knuth, Computer Modern Typefaces (Volume E of Computers &
Typesetting).
Donald E. Knuth et al., Metafontware.
Package page on CTAN: https://ctan.org/pkg/mft
Section in the Web2c manual:
https://tug.org/texinfohtml/web2c.html#mft-invocation
Typeset source code, including the typesetting controls:
https://ctan.org/pkg/knuth-pdf
AUTHORS
Donald E. Knuth wrote and still maintains the program. He ported it to
Unix with the help of Pierre MacKay and the Unix port of weave by
Howard Trickey and Pavel Curtis.
Public discussion list and bug reports: https://lists.tug.org/tex-k
Web2C 2026 7 January 2026 mft(1)
texlive-bin 2026.78235 - Generated Thu Mar 5 15:49:55 CST 2026