teTeX 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LaTeX2e is the recommended version of LaTeX, and the older version LaTeX 2.09 is obsolete.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