Contents of The plain base

The `plain` base

The plain base provides the commands that The ${\mfsl META}$ ${\mfsl FONT\/}$ book describes. (See Appendix B of The ${\mfsl META}$ ${\mfsl FONT\/}$ book, if you have it around — maybe a library has it — I'm learning from a copy borrowed from the local university's library.)

When it starts, automatically loads³the plain base. This is usually called plain.base, or sometimes only (see subsection $[*]$ for why this works) mf.base, although for those systems concerned (such as UNIX), both file names should really be present.

EmTEX for MS-DOS calls the plain base plain.bas, due to filename truncation.