A Documentation Guide
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: tetex@informatik.uni-hannover.de (send mail to majordomo@informatik.uni-hannover.de
containing the lines subscribe tetex to join) and questions
about using LaTeX, TeX etc are best asked on the usenet
newsgroup comp.text.tex.
Much of the documentation is in the form of dvi and PostScript
files which should display using xdvi or ghostscript
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.
Guides to TeX and LaTeX
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LaTeX 2.09 is obsolete.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 an 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 aswers 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 (also in dvi format) 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 (also in dvi format). 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
- xypic
- there is also a reference manual.
- texdraw
- There are examples in the directory generic/texdraw/.
- 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),
a
quick reference card
and examples in the directory
generic/pstricks.
- 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 (also in dvi format) and a guide to plotting graphs (dvi) using METAPOST.
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.
Document Structure
- xr
- Page references to external documents.
- varioref
- "Intelligent" page references.
- lastpage
- Reference the number of pages in your LaTeX document (as in a
page footer that says: Page N of M)
- hyperref
- Create hypertext documents in dvi or PDF form.
- KOMA-script
- A drop-in replacement for the article/report/book classes with
emphasis on European rules of typography and paper formats as laid
down by Jan Tschichold. The article class, for example, becomes scrartcl.
Formatting Tools
- bm
- The right way to make bold mathematical symbols.
- xspace
- Define commands
that don't eat spaces.
- moreverb
- A verbatim
mode that can handle TABs properly, can number lines, can number
lines in an included file, can produce boxed verbatims, etc.
- verbatim
- A better verbatim environment.
- picinpar
- Insert pictures into paragraphs. (NOTE: Piet van Oostrum does
not recommend this package. Picins is recommended instead.
- multicol
- LaTeX package to mix single and multiple columns. Allows you
to shift between two and one columns anywhere.
- ftnright
- Customze placement of footnotes in two column documents.
- enumerate
- Adds an optional argument to the enumerate environment which
determines the style in which the counter is printed.
- indentfirst
- Indent first paragraph after section header.
- algorithms
- Defines a floating algorithm environment designed to work with
the algorithmic package.
- textfit
- Package to support fitting of text to a given width of height
by scaling the font.
- typehtml
- Typeset HTML (i.e., World Wide Web documents) directly from LaTeX.
Page Layout
- geometry
- Customise page layout (page sizes) using an easy and flexible
user interface. Example gtest.tex generates
a testpage.
- fancyheadings
- This package has been superceded by fancyhdr.
- fancyhdr
- Support for sophisticated control of page headers and footers
in LaTeX2e. It supercedes fancyheadings.
- footnpag
- Allows footnotes on individual pages to be numbered from 1, rather than being numbered sequentially through the document.
- layout
- Generate a test page showing the page layout.
- a4
- Mostly superceded by LaTeX2e support for a4 paper but defines the extra option of widemargins. The geometry package is usually better.
- anysize
- Another package to set page sizes. Superceded by Geometry.
Tables
- array
- An extended implementation of the array and tabular
environments which implements options to format columns.
- longtable
- Support for tables longer than a page
- delarray
- Add delimiters (parentheses etc.) around arrays.
- supertabular
- A multi-page tables package.
- dcolumn
- Align on the decimal point of numbers in tabulars.
- hhline
- Better horizontal lines in tabulars and arrays.
- tabularx
- Tabulars that widen automatically.
- ltxtable
- Longtable combined with tabularx.
- colortbl
- Add colour to LaTeX tables.
- booktabs
- A package to lay out tables in high-quality (according to the
author's opinion) book form.
Floats
Floats are environments like figure and
table which move text etc around in the document.
- afterpage
- Implements a command that causes the commands specified in its
argument to be expanded after the curent page is
output. Useful to flush floats, for example
- float
- Improves the interface for defining floating objects such as
figures and tables. Introduces the boxed float and the ruled float.
- subfigure
- Figures divided into subfigures.
- endfloat
- Place all figures on pages by themselves at the end of the document.
- caption
- Extends caption capabilities for figures and tables, such as
the caption width, style, font.
- sidecap
- Defines new LaTeX environments called SCfigure and SCtable
(analogous to figure and table), to typeset captions sideways.
leftcaption and rightcaption.
- floatflt
- 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.
Fonts
- fontsmpl
- Print a sample of a font.
- rawfonts
- Emulation of LaTeX 2.09 low-level font commands, eg \tenrm.
- beton
- Typeset a LaTeX2e document with the Concrete fonts designed by
Don Knuth and used in his book ``Concrete Mathematics''.
- ccfonts
- LaTeX font definition files for the Concrete fonts and a LaTeX
package for typesetting documents using Concrete as the
default font family.
- mflogo
- LaTeX package and font definition file to access the Knuthian
`logo' fonts described in `The MetaFontbook' and the MetaFont
and logos in LaTeX documents.
- Concrete Math fonts
- A set of math fonts for use with Donalt Knuth's concrete text fonts.
AMS Maths
-
amslatex
- User guide for AMS-LaTeX as implemented in the amsmath
package.
Also see various Tex and LaTeX examples in the directory
latex/amslatex/.
- theorem
- Enhancements to the theorem environments, giving more choice
in theorem layout.
- bbm
- Blackboard variant fonts for Computer Modern, with LaTeX support .
Font sample
- euler,
- Provides a setup for using the AMS Euler family of fonts for
math in LaTeX documents.
- eufrak
- Use the Euler Fraktur symbols.
- euscript
- Substitute the usual math caligraphic characters with Euler
script equivalents.
- amsguide
- User guide for AMS-TeX (the original plain TeX maths package).
- joyerr.tex
- Errata for The Joy of TeX.
Multilingual LaTeX
Multilingual support for LaTeX.
- babel
- The complete reference manual.
- tb1202, tb1401, tb1604
- Some articles on Babel which appeared in tugboat.
- user
- The babel users guide.
Graphics
- trees
- Macros for drawing "tree" diagrams.
Other packages
- fileerr
- Implementation of an error handler for "file-not-found" errors.
- showkeys
- Show label, ref, cite and bib keys.
- somedefs
- A "programmer's toolkit" for package writers.
- calc
- Package for infix arithmetic notation in LaTeX.
- labels
- A package for making sticky labels in LaTeX.
- changebar
- Add "change bars" in a document margin using dvi \specials.
- draftcopy
- Overprint DRAFT on each page of document to
indicate draft copy. The directory
latex/draftcopy/ has a number of
examples.
- foiltex
- LaTeX class for making "foils", ie overhead
transparencies. There are license conditions which prohibit
commercial use.
seminar is a good
alternative. There is also an example document.
- seminar
- A LaTeX style for overhead
transparencies and notes. Example 1, Example 2. List of frequently asked
questions. List of
known bugs.
- examdoc
- Style for preparing examination papers.
-
minitoc
- Package to add a mini-"table of contents" to each chapter.
Example 1,
example 2.
-
rotating
- Environment to rotate text, figures etc. There are examples, as
LaTeX source and
output.
-
rotfloat
- Combines rotating package with enhanced float
facilities of float.
Examples:
LaTeX source and
output.
- textmerg
- Package for creating "text merges" (like wordprocessor mail
merge letters) in LaTeX. The directory
latex/textmerg
contains examples.
Ancilliary 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
BibTex'ing 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 ancilliary program custom-bib 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.
Makeindex
The makeindex program which provides facilities for
generating an index is described in the documents
Index Preparation and Processing and the
Makeindex user guide.
Dvips
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.
Texinfo
Texinfo is a macro package for TeX
used by the GNU system for producing printed manuals. See also
Makeinfo
Conversions between TeX, LaTeX and other formats
Consult your
local system administrator about whether any of these programs are
installed. Most are available in source form from the CTAN ftp server
in directory tex-archive/support/
Wordprocessor formats
There is a regularly updated list of
frequently-asked
questions on converters between LaTeX and wordprocessor formats.
HTML
The most comprehensive program to convert LaTeX documents to HTML is
latex2html,
available via your nearest CTAN site in directory tex-archive/support/latex2html/
Local Additions
Your system administrator may have added additional packages and documentation
as well as those which come with teTeX.
Other sources of Information
Here are some other useful sources of information on LaTeX, TeX and
related program on the World-Wide Web.
Last modified: Wed Mar 18 18:03:19 GMT 1998