[texhax] Some questions about plain TeX and LaTeX

[Philip TAYLOR]

Francisco Villafañe wrote:

> 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?

\catcode á = \active
\def á}{\´a}

> 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?

\parbox [position]{width}{\vbox to <height>{\hsize = <width><text>\vss}}

Of course, the latter can't prevent text which won't fit within
the parbox from overprinting other material, but the parbox itself
will be the right size even if its contents aren't !

** Phil.