This page is an attempt at a guided tour around the huge amount of TeX
and LaTeX documentation which comes as part of teTEX, the
unix TeX and LaTeX system assembled by Thomas Esser. It is
contributed by Keith
Refson and all comments, suggestions and flames should be directed
to him. Queries
about installing and maintaining the teTEX installation
itself should be directed to the teTEX mailing
list: (See the teTEX Homepage for
instructions) --- but check the frequently-asked questions list first.
Questions about using LaTeX, TeX etc are best posted to the
usenet newsgroup comp.text.tex where
they will receive attention from a worldwide readership.
Much of the documentation is in the form of dvi and PostScript
files which should display using xdvi or ghostscript front
ends such as ghostview
or gv
from a properly configured web browser. Alternatively you may
download and print them. The original LaTeX sources can be found in
the documentation tree which is rooted at $TEXMFMAIN/doc. The command texdoc[package-name] will attempt to display documentation for that
package from the shell command line.
LaTeX2e is the recommended version of LaTeX, and the older version
LaTeX 2.09 is obsolete. If you know LaTeX2.09 read about LaTeX2e vs LaTeX2.09 and why you
should switch. There are two manuals describing the LaTeX language
itself, which may at a pinch substitute for a book, a concise manual
entitled Essential LaTeX and a
fuller "not so short" Introduction
to LaTeX2e. There is also a full reference manual
of LaTeX2e commands -- ideal for looking up a particular piece of
formatting while writing a document (also available in dvi format) and a table of
available mathematical symbols.
Useful information in a questions and answers format is provided by
the UK TeX users group Frequently Asked Questions
list.
Most LaTeX books refer to a local guide to describe
operating-system and implementation-dependent aspects, notably the
commands to invoke LaTeX and how to preview and print documents. The
document Running LaTeX and utilities
on a Unix system (also in PostScript form) is a good
introduction to most of these topics.
There are errata lists available for two well-known books,
the LaTeX Book and the LaTeX Companion. (A complete revision of
Chapter 8 of The LaTeX Companion is also available
from CTAN courtesy of the publisher, Addison-Wesley.)
Graphics and Colour
A very common requirement is to
include some kind of graphics as an external file (usually PostScript)
into a LaTeX document. The definitive manual on how to do this is
Keith Reckdahl's excellent Using
EPS graphics in LaTeX2e. The document
Packages in the graphics
bundle is the documentation on the
recommended LaTeX2e graphics package, which includes
information on how to use colours in the output.
A very powerful additional capability is provided by the psfrag system. This allows you to
import PostScript figures from any other package, but use LaTeX's
power for all of the mathematical and textual annotations. (But note
that xfig(1) allows you to do this anyway).
Graph and Diagram Drawing
Probably the best way to draw a simple diagram is to use the
xfig program (see the unix man page for details). However
there are programmatic ways for more sophisticated work. These are
A macro package for a much enhanced LaTeX "picture mode". Requires driver support
for tpic \specials. Some drawing programs such as
xfig can write their output as eepic macros.
Extend LaTeX picture drawing environment using PostScript \specials.
Pstricks
a set of macros for performing fancy twiddles
using PostScript, such as drawing of geometrical objects, diagrams,
fancy boxes, grayscales etc. There is a User Guide (
part 1,
part 2,
part 3,
part 4),
and a quick
reference card.
METAPOST
a development of Donald Knuth's METAFONT program
which produces PostScript rendition of fonts, diagrams etc rather than
bitmapped versions. Documentation includes a manual and a guide to plotting graphs (dvi) using METAPOST.
This package defines the overpic environment for
overlaying a picture environment on top of an included graphic
defined by an includegraphics command.
Examples in
opic-abs.tex and
opic-rel.tex.
LaTeX Packages
These packages control the visual
appearance and formatting of LaTeX documents. Many of them are
described in the book The
LaTeX Companion and they are grouped here in accordance with
the headings defined there.
This installation contains the packages listed below. Many more
have been written to provide additional capabilities and are
available for download from the Comprehensive TeX Archive
Network server, abbreviated to CTAN. Here is the Catalogue of packages
available from CTAN. LaTeX itself and most of these packages
are released under the LaTeX
Project Public License.
Create hypertext documents in dvi, postscript or PDF form.
Contents listings, references, bibliographic citations and URLs are
converted to hyperlinks.
A comprehensive and customizable re-implementation of the
verbatim environment. Allows specification of fonts,
colours etc., line numbering, framing, TAB
handling and conditional processing.
Adds an optional argument to the enumerate environment which
determines the style in which the counter is printed.
comma
\usepackage{comma} defines the command
\commaform{number} which typesets
number with a comma every third digit. If you want
something other than a comma, for instance a thin
space, or a full word space, redefine \commaformtoken
for instance \renewcommand\commaformtoken{\,}.
Allows the inclusion of plain tex markup in a LaTeX document. It
defines the LaTeX environment plain which is used to
enclose the plain tex to be included.
Various list related environments. There's a more
versatile `description' environment, and some stuff for
making `compacted' lists (with no extra space between
items).
A complete ground-up rewrite of LaTeX's `tabular' and
`array' environments. Has lots of advantages over
the standard version, and over the version in `array.sty'.
The chappg package causes pages to be numbered
in the style chapter-pagenumber. So the pages
of chapter 3 will be numbered 3-1, 3-2, ..., and the pages of
appendix B will be numbered B-1, B-2, ...
Implements a command that causes the commands specified in its
argument to be expanded after the current page is
output. Useful to flush floats, for example
Defines new LaTeX environments called SCfigure and SCtable
(analogous to figure and table), to typeset captions sideways.
leftcaption and rightcaption.
Float text around figures and tables which do not span the
full width of a page. This is an improved version of floatfig.
Examples, latex
source,precursor package
floatfig.
Combines rotating package
with enhanced float facilities of float.
Examples:
LaTeX source and
output.
Fonts and Supporting Packages
In addition to the
preinstalled fonts, see the section on using fontinst to install new fonts, especially
PostScript Type 1 fonts and the font naming conventions.
A set of virtual fonts designed to be a close approximation to
a T1-encoded set based on the CM fonts. This should make it
possible to use the existing Type1 versions of the CM fonts to
produce PDF files even when one needs hyphenation patterns other
than English. See also aecompl
This font
encoding package supports the `texnansi' encoding as used by
default in the Y&Y TeX system. There is also an option to
support the `ansinew' encoding that is the default encoding in
Microsoft Windows.
LaTeX package and
font definition file to access the Knuthian `logo' fonts
described in `The MetaFontbook' and the MetaFont and logos in
LaTeX documents.
A very useful guide to the American Mathematical Society extensions to
LaTeX is provided in Chapter 8 of
The
LaTeX Companion. A revised version is available online from
a CTAN archive in
directory info/companion-rev/ as PostScript
or PDF
courtesy of the publisher, Addison-Wesley.)
User guide for AMS-LaTeX as implemented in the amsmath
package.
Also see the frequently-asked-questions
list , various Tex and LaTeX examples in the directory latex/amsmath/.
This package defines the command \mathscr{ABC}
which typesets symbols such as Hamiltonians using the Ralph
Smith Formal Script (rsfs) calligraphic fonts.
MLTeX is a modification of TeX version that allows
the hyphenation of words with accented letters using ordinary
Computer Modern (CM) fonts. There are instructions on how to use MLTeX's \charsubdef
extension with LaTeX .
Macros to interact with sectional divisions of standard LaTeX classes.
Web2C implementation
teTEX is based on the web2c
implementation of TeX, metafont etc.
Information on running the various programs is contained in web2c.dvi. All programs use a
common, configurable, library for searching for files. The file kpathsea.dvi gives details. The
file tree is built in compliance with the TeX directory structure
Ancillary Programs
Bibtex
Bibtex is a
separate program for managing databases of bibliographic references
and selecting for citation in a LaTeX document. It is described in
chapter 13 of The
LaTeX Companion and online in the documents entitled BibTexing and Designing BibTeX Styles.
The latter document, Designing BibTeX Styles is a guide
to customizing the format of the reference list. The non-expert may
find it more useful to use the ancillary program makebst which
semi-automates the design of a new bibliography style.
natbib is a LaTeX package which
allows customization of the citation style in the text (rather than
the format of the reference list). It works with almost all
bibliography styles, even those which define their own citation
macros.
The full documentation for the
dvips DVI -> PostScript
translator. N.B. The advice concerning including PostScript graphics
has been superceded by the standard LaTeX2e
graphics package.
To use the new Type I versions of the computer-modern fonts, use dvips
with the extra argument -Pcmz or (-Pcm which
does not download the fonts in the PostScript output.) Mathematical
documents will probably also require -Pamz (or
-Pams) for the AMS math fonts. eg
dvips -Pcmz -Pamz -P myprinter mydoc.dvi
Type 1 fonts are scaleable so the resulting PostScript does not
include bitmapped fonts and is therefore resolution-independent.
This is very useful if the postscript is to be scaled up or down
or the final destination printer is not known.
Xdvi
The online documentation for xdvi only available as a unix
"man" page and is not accessible through this WWW page. Use man
xdvi to read it.
Texinfo
Texinfo is a macro package for TeX
used by the GNU system for producing printed manuals.
This distribution includes several new developments of TeX (which are
also supplied with LaTeX macros.
pdftex and pdflatex
Han the Thanth's variant which can generate output in Adobe PDF
format as well as the usual DVI. Documentation is in the PDFTeX manual and there is a list
of frequently-asked questions.
omega and lambda
The Omega system extends TeX
for mixed multi-lingual typesetting using unicode. See the omega home page.
etex and elatex
e-TeX adds several extensions
to TeX notably right-to-left typesetting.