TeX is a typesetting system written by Donald E. Knuth, who says in the Preface to his book on TeX (see TeX-related books) that it is ``intended for the creation of beautiful books-and especially for books that contain a lot of mathematics''.
Knuth developed a system of `literate programming' to write TeX,
and he provides the literate (WEB) source of TeX free of charge,
together with tools for processing the web source into something
that can be compiled and something that can be printed; there's never
any mystery about what TeX does. Furthermore, the WEB system
provides mechanisms to port TeX to new operating systems and
computers; in order that one may have some confidence in the ports,
Knuth supplied a test by means of which one may judge the fidelity of
a TeX system. TeX and its documents are therefore highly
portable.
TeX is a macro processor, and offers its users a powerful
programming capability. For this reason, TeX on its own is a
pretty difficult beast to deal with, so Knuth provided a package of
macros for use with TeX called plain TeX; plain TeX is
effectively the minimum set of macros one can usefully employ with
TeX, together with some demonstration versions of higher-level
commands (the latter are better regarded as models than used as-is).
When people say they're ``programming in TeX'', they usually mean
they're programming in plain TeX.
The `X' stands for the Greek letter Chi, and is pronounced by English-speakers either a bit like the `ch' in `loch' ([x] in the IPA) or like `k'. It definitely is not pronounced `ks'.
Metafont was written by Knuth as a companion to TeX; whereas TeX defines the layout of glyphs on a page, Metafont defines the shapes of the glyphs and the relations between them. Metafont details the sizes of glyphs, for TeX's benefit, and details the rasters used to represent the glyphs, for the benefit of programs that will produce printed output as post processes after a run of TeX.
Metafont's language for defining fonts permits the expression of several classes of things: first (of course), the simple geometry of the glyphs; second, the properties of the print engine for which the output is intended; and third, `meta'-information which can distinguish different design sizes of the same font, or the difference between two fonts that belong to the same (or related) families.
Knuth (and others) have designed a fair range of fonts using Metafont, but font design using Metafont is much more of a minority skill than is TeX macro-writing. The complete TeX-user nevertheless needs to be aware of Metafont, and to be able to run Metafont to generate personal copies of new fonts.
The MetaPost system implements a picture-drawing language very much like that of Metafont except that it outputs PostScript commands instead of run-length-encoded bitmaps. MetaPost is a powerful language for producing figures for documents to be printed on PostScript printers. It provides access to all the features of PostScript and it includes facilities for integrating text and graphics. (Knuth tells us that he uses nothing else for diagrams in text that he is writing.)
Much of MetaPost's source code was copied from Metafont's sources with Knuth's permission.
LaTeX is a TeX macro package, originally written by Leslie Lamport, that provides a document processing system. LaTeX allows markup to describe the structure of a document, so that the user need not think about presentation. By using document classes and add-on packages, the same document can be produced in a variety of different layouts.
Lamport says that LaTeX ``represents a balance between functionality and ease of use''. This shows itself as a continual conflict that leads to the need for such as the present article: LaTeX can meet most user requirements, but finding out how is often tricky.
Lamport never recommended how one should pronounce LaTeX, but a lot of people pronounce it `Lay TeX' or perhaps `Lah TeX' (with TeX pronounced as the program itself; see the rules for TeX).
The `epsilon' in `LaTeX2e' is supposed to be suggestive of a small improvement over the old LaTeX 2.09. Nevertheless, most people pronounce the name as `LaTeX-two-ee'.
plain TeX or LaTeX?There's no straightforward answer to this question. Many people swear
by plain TeX, and produce highly respectable documents using it
(Knuth is an example of this, of course). But equally, many people
are happy to let someone else take the design decisions for them,
accepting a small loss of flexibility in exchange for a saving of
brain power.
The arguments around this topic can provoke huge amounts of noise and heat, without offering much by way of light; your best bet is to find out what those around you are using, and to go with the crowd. Later on, you can always switch your allegiance; don't bother about it.
If you are preparing a manuscript for a publisher or journal, ask them what markup they want before you develop your own; many big publishers have developed their own LaTeX styles for journals and books, and insist that authors stick closely to their markup.
AMSTeX is a TeX macro package, originally written by Michael Spivak for
the American Mathematical Society (AMS) during 1983-1985. It
is described in
``The Joy of TeX'' by Michael D. Spivak (second edition,
AMS, 1990, ISBN 0-821-82997-1). It is based on plain TeX, but
provides many
features for producing more professional-looking maths formulas with
less burden on authors. It pays attention to the finer details of
sizing and positioning that mathematical publishers care about. The
aspects covered include multi-line displayed equations, equation
numbering, ellipsis dots, matrices, double accents, multi-line
subscripts, syntax checking (faster processing on initial
error-checking TeX runs), and other things.
As LaTeX increased in popularity, authors asked to submit papers to the AMS in LaTeX, and so the AMS developed AMSLaTeX, which is a collection of LaTeX packages and classes that offer authors most of the functionality of AMSTeX.
The Eplain macro package expands on and extends the
definitions in plain TeX. Eplain is not intended to provide
``generic typesetting capabilities'', as do LaTeX or
Texinfo.
Instead, it provides definitions that are intended to be useful
regardless of the high-level commands that you use when you actually
prepare your manuscript.
For example, Eplain does not have a command \section,
which would format section headings in an ``appropriate'' way, as
LaTeX's \section. The philosophy of Eplain is that
some people will always need or want to go beyond the macro designer's
idea of ``appropriate''. Such canned macros are fine - as long as you
are willing to accept the resulting output. If you don't like the
results, or if you are trying to match a different format, you are out
of luck.
On the other hand, almost everyone would like capabilities such as cross-referencing by labels, so that you don't have to put actual page numbers in the manuscript. Karl Berry, the author of Eplain, says he is not aware of any generally available macro packages that do not force their typographic style on an author, and yet provide such capabilities.
Lollipop is a macro package written by Victor Eijkhout; it was used in the production of his book ``TeX by Topic'' (see Tex-related books). The manual says of it:
Lollipop is `TeX made easy'. Lollipop is a macro package that functions as a toolbox for writing TeX macros. It was my intention to make macro writing so easy that implementing a fully new layout in TeX would become a matter of less than an hour for an average document, and that it would be a task that could be accomplished by someone with only a very basic training in TeX programming.Lollipop is an attempt to make structured text formatting available for environments where previously only WYSIWYG packages could be used because adapting the layout is so much more easy with them than with traditional TeX macro packages.
The manual goes on to talk of ambitions to ``capture some of the LaTeX market share''; it's a very witty package, but little sign of it taking over from LaTeX is detectable... An article about Lollipop appeared in TUGboat 13(3).
Texinfo is a documentation system that uses one source file to
produce both on-line information and printed output. So
instead of writing two different documents, one for the on-line help
and the other for a typeset manual, you need write only one
document source file. When the work
is revised, you need only revise one document. You can read the
on-line information, known as an ``Info file'', with an Info
documentation-reading program. By convention, Texinfo source file
names end with a .texi or .texinfo extension.
You can write and format Texinfo files into Info files within GNU
emacs, and read them using the emacs Info
reader. If you do not have emacs, you can format Texinfo
files into Info files using makeinfo and read them using
info.
The Texinfo distribution, including a set of TeX macros for
formatting Texinfo files is available as macros/texinfo/texinfo-3.9.tar.gz (also
available as a .zip file macros/texinfo/texinfo-3.9.zip).
It's free because Knuth chose to make it so. He is nevertheless apparently happy that others should earn money by selling TeX-based services and products. While several valuable TeX-related tools and packages are offered subject to restrictions imposed by the GNU General Public Licence (`Copyleft'), TeX itself is not subject to Copyleft.
There are commercial versions of TeX available; for some users, it's reassuring to have paid support. What is more, some of the commercial implementations have features that are not available in free versions. (The reverse is also true: some free implementations have features not available commercially.)
Usually, this article does not describe commercial versions; see major vendors for some details.
Knuth has declared that he will do no further development of TeX; he will continue to fix any bugs that are reported to him (though bugs are rare). This decision was made soon after TeX version 3.0 was released; at each bug-fix release the version number acquires one more digit, so that it tends to the limit pi (at the time of writing, Knuth's latest release is version 3.14159). Knuth wants TeX to be frozen at version pi when he dies; thereafter, no further changes may be made to Knuth's source. (A similar rule is applied to Metafont; its version number tends to the limit e, and currently stands at 2.718.)
There are projects (some of them long-term projects: see, for example, the LaTeX3 project) to build substantial new macro packages based on TeX. For the even longer term, there are various projects to build a successor to TeX; see the Omega project and NTS.
TUG is the TeX Users Group. TUGboat is TUG's main journal, containing useful articles about TeX and Metafont. TUG also produces a newsletter for members (TeX and TUG News), organises a yearly conference, runs training courses, sells almost all TeX-related books, and distributes TeX-related microcomputer software on disk. TUG has a Technical Council to coordinate TeX-related developments (TUG Technical Working Groups). Enquiries should be directed to:
TeX Users Group
1850 Union Street, #1637
San Francisco CA 94123
USA
Tel: (+1) 805-963-1338
Fax: (+1) 805-963-8358
Email: tug@tug.org
Web: http://www.tug.org/
CTAN details: usergrps/tug.tar.gz
The following groups publish their membership (etc.) information electronically on CTAN archives:
DANTE, Deutschsprachige Anwendervereinigung TeX e.V.
Postfach 10 18 40
D-69008 Heidelberg
Germany
Tel: (+49) 06221 2 97 66
Fax: (+49) 06221 16 79 06
Email: dante@dante.de
Web: http://www.dante.de/
CTAN details: usergrps/dante.tar.gz
Association GUTenberg,
BP 10,
93220 Gagny principal,
France
Email: gut@irisa.fr
Web: http://www.ens.fr/gut/
CTAN details: usergrps/gut.tar.gz
NTG
Postbus 394, 1740AJ Schagen,
The Netherlands
Email: ntg@nic.surfnet.nl
Web: http://ei0.ei.ele.tue.nl/ntg/ntg.html
CTAN details: usergrps/ntg.tar.gz
UK TeX Users' Group,
c/o Peter Abbott,
1 Eymore Close,
Selly Oak,
Birmingham B29 4LB
UK
Tel: (+44) 0121 476 2159
Email: UKTuG-Enquiries@tex.ac.uk
Web: http://www.tex.ac.uk/UKTUG/home.html
CTAN details: usergrps/uktug.tar.gz
A listing of all known groups is available as usergrps/info/usergrps.tex
TUG has an autonomous Technical Council which oversees a number of working groups on areas of common interest to the TeX community. The Council has three members (current chair is Michael Ferguson, assisted by Yannis Haralambous and Sebastian Rahtz), who liaise with chair people of each working group. Each group establishes its own working methods and membership, and anyone interested in taking part should contact the chair. Suggestions for new groups should be addressed to Michael Ferguson (mike@inrs-telecom.uquebec.ca).
A brief list of the active groups follows:
Contact: Alan Hoenig (ajhjj@cunyvm.cuny.edu)
Contact: Barbara Beeton (bnb@math.ams.org)
Contact: Yannis Haralambous (\EmaildotYannis.Haralambous@univ-lille1.fr)
Contact: T.V. Raman (raman@adobe.com)
Contact: Sebastian Rahtz (s.rahtz@elsevier.co.uk)
The group's current set of proposals are to be found on CTAN at tds/draft-standard.tar.gz
Contact: Karl Berry (kb@cs.umb.edu)
\special{..} commands.
Contact: Michael Sofka (sofkam@rpi.edu)
Contact: Ken Dreyhaupt (kend@springer-ny.com)
Contact: Christina Thiele (cthiele@ccs.carleton.ca)
While Knuth's book is the definitive reference for TeX, there are other books covering TeX:
The list for Metafont is rather short:
This list only covers books in English: UK TUG cannot hope to maintain a list of books in languages other than our own.
Bodenheimer's article, from which the present one was developed, is
posted (nominally monthly) to newsgroup
comp.text.tex and cross-posted to newsgroups
news.answers and comp.answers. The most
recently posted copy of Bodenheimer's article is kept on CTAN in
help/TeX-FAQ; it is also archived at any site that archives
news.answers, such as rtfm.mit.edu
(18.181.0.24), and the article is available there
via anonymous ftp (in the directory
pub/usenet/news.answers/tex-faq). If you have access to email,
but not to ftp, use the ftpmail server
(see access to the archives).
There are (still) people who can use networks but can't read Usenet news; for them, not all is lost if they can send and receive email.
The TeXhax digest is operated as a
mailing list. Send a message `subscribe texhax' to
texhax-request@tex.ac.uk to join it.
The mailing list info-tex offers a mail analogue of the Usenet group
comp.text.tex; mail to the list us automatically submitted
to the newsgroup, and thus answers to questions may be given by people
who only read the newsgroup. Subscribe to the list by sending a
message `subscribe info-tex <your name>' to listserv@shsu.edu
The (rather high volume of) postings to comp.text.tex may
be had in digested form through the mailing list ctt-digest.
Subscribe to the list by sending a message
`subscribe ctt-Digest <your name>' to listserv@shsu.edu
Announcements of TeX-related installations on the CTAN
archives are sent to the mailing list ctan-ann. Subscribe
to the list by sending a message `subscribe ctan-ann <your name>' to
listserv@urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de
Issues related to Metafont (and, increasingly, MetaPost) are discussed on
the metafont mailing list; subscribe by sending a message
`subscribe metafont <your name>' to listserv@ens.fr
Several other TeX-related lists may be accessed via
listserv@urz.uni-heidelberg.de. Send a message containing
the line `help' to this address.
The
literate programming newsgroup
comp.programming.literate is gatewayed to the litprog
mailing list; subscribe by sending a message
`subscribe litprog <your name>' to listserv@shsu.edu.
BibTeX, a program originally designed to produce bibliographies in
conjunction with LaTeX, is explained in Section 4.3 and Appendix B
of Leslie Lamport's LaTeX manual
(see TeX-related books).
The document ``BibTeXing'', contained in the file btxdoc.tex,
gives a more complete description. The LaTeX Companion
(see TeX-related books) also
has information on BibTeX and writing BibTeX style files.
The document ``Designing BibTeX Styles'', contained in the file
btxhak.tex, explains the postfix stack-based language used to write
BibTeX styles (.bst files). The file btxbst.doc is the template
for the four standard styles (plain, abbrv, alpha, unsrt). It
also contains their documentation.
The complete BibTeX documentation set (including the files above)
is in biblio/bibtex/distribs/doc.tar.gz
There is a Unix BibTeX man page in the web2c package (see TeX systems). Any copy you may find of a man page written in 1985 (before ``BibTeXing'' and ``Designing BibTeX Styles'' appeared) is obsolete, and should be thrown away.
PiCTeX is a set of macros for drawing diagrams and pictures. The macros are freely available in graphics/pictex.tar.gz; however, the PiCTeX manual itself is not free. It is available for $30 ($35 with the disk) from the TeX Users Group (see TUG). The proceeds from the sales go to Michael Wichura, the author of PiCTeX, and to TUG.
Before you ask for a TeX macro or LaTeX class or package file to do something, try searching Graham Williams' (Graham.Williams@dit.csiro.au) catalogue, available as help/Catalogue/catalogue.html; this lists many macro packages together with brief descriptive texts.
Having learnt of a file that seems interesting, search a CTAN archive for it (see finding files on CTAN). For packages listed in The LaTeX Companion the file info/companion.ctan may be consulted as an alternative to searching the archive's index. It lists the current location in the archive of such files.
An alternative procedure is to use http://www.ora.com/homepages/CTAN-Web/, which permits limited `keyword' searching for files on the CTAN sites.
To find software at a CTAN site, you can use anonymous ftp to
the host with the command `quote site index <term>', or the
searching script at http://www.dante.de/cgi-bin/ctan-index
To get the best use out of the ftp facility you should remember that
<term> is a Regular Expression and not a fixed string,
and also that many files are distributed
in source form with an extension different to the final file. (For
example LaTeX packages are often distributed sources with extension
dtx rather than as package files with extension sty.)
One should make the regular expresion general enough to find the file
you are looking for, but not too general, as the ftp interface will
only return the first 20 lines that match your request.
The following examples illustrate these points.
To search for the LaTeX package `caption',
you might use the command:
quote site index caption.stybut it will fail to find the desired package (which is distributed as
caption.dtx) and does return unwanted `hits' (such as
hangcaption.sty). Also, although this example does not show it the
`.' in `caption.sty' is used as the regular expression that
matches any character.
So
quote site index doc.stymatches such unwanted files as language/swedish/slatex/doc2sty/makefile
Of course if you know the package is stored as .dtx you can
search for that name, but in general you may not know the extension
used on the archive.
The solution is to add `/' to the front of the package name and
`
.
quote site index /caption\\. quote site index /doc\\.do narrow the search down sufficiently. (In the case of doc, a few extra files are found, but the list returned is sufficiently small to be easily inspected.)
If the search string is too wide and too many files would match, the
list will be truncated to the first 20 items found. Using some
knowledge of the CTAN directory tree you can usually narrow the search
sufficiently. As an example suppose you wanted to find a copy of the
dvips driver for MSDOS. You might use the command:
quote site index dvipsbut the result would be a truncated list, not including the file you want. (If this list were not truncated 412 items would be returned!) However we can restrict the search to MSDOS related drivers as follows.
quote site index msdos.*dvipsWhich just returns relevant lines such as systems/msdos/dviware/dvips/dvips5528.zip
A basic introduction to searching with regular expressions is:
"a" matches "a" etc.;
"." matches any character;
"[abcD-F]" matches any single character from the set
{"a","b","c","D","E","F"};
"*" placed after an expression matches zero or more occurrences
so "a*" matches "a" and "aaaa", and "[a-zA-Z]*" matches a
`word';
"\" `quotes' a special character such as "." so "\." just
matches ".";
"^" matches the beginning of a line;
"$" matches the end of a line.
For technical reasons in the quote site index command, you need to
`double' any \ hence the string /caption in the above example.
The quote site command ignores the case of letters. Searching for
.caption or CAPTION would produce the same result.
A DVI file (that is, a file with the type or extension .dvi) is
TeX's main output file, using TeX in its broadest sense to
include LaTeX, etc. `DVI' is supposed to be an acronym for
DeVice-Independent, meaning that the file can be
printed on almost any
kind of typographic output device. The DVI file is designed to be
read by a driver (DVI drivers) to produce
further output designed specifically for a particular printer (e.g., a
LaserJet) or to be used as input to a previewer for display on a
computer screen. DVI files use TeX's internal coding; a TeX
input file should produce the same DVI file regardless of which
implementation of TeX is used to produce it.
A DVI file contains all the information that is needed for printing
or previewing except for the actual bitmaps or outlines of fonts, and
possibly material to be introduced by means of
\special commands.
The canonical reference for the structure of a DVI file is the source of dvitype (systems/knuth/texware/dvitype.web).
A driver is a program that takes as input a dvi file
(DVI files) and
(usually) produces a file that can be sent to a typographic
output device, called a printer for short.
A driver will usually be specific to a particular printer, although any PostScript printer ought to be able to print the output from a PostScript driver.
As well as the DVI file, the driver needs font information.
Font information may be held as bitmaps or as outlines, or simply as a
set of pointers into the fonts that the printer itself `has'.
Each driver will expect the font information in
a particular form. For more information on the forms of fonts,
see questions pk files,
tfm files,
virtual fonts
and Using PostScript fonts with TeX.
PK files (packed raster) contain font bitmaps. The output from Metafont includes a generic font (GF) file and the utility gftopk produces the PK file from that. There are a lot of PK files, as one is needed for each font, that is each magnification (size) of each design (point) size for each weight for each family. Further, since the PK files for one printer do not necessarily work well for another, the whole set needs to be duplicated for each printer type at a site. As a result, they are often held in an elaborate directory structure, or in `font library files', to regularise access.
TFM stands for TeX font metrics, and TFM files hold information about the sizes of the characters of the font in question, and about ligatures and kerns within that font. One TFM file is needed for each font used by TeX, that is for each design (point) size for each weight for each family; one TFM file serves for all magnifications, so that there are (typically) fewer TFM files than there are PK files. The important point is that TFM files are used by TeX (LaTeX, etc.), but are not, generally, needed by the printer driver.
Virtual fonts for TeX were first implemented by David Fuchs in the early days of TeX, but for most people they started when Knuth redefined the format, and wrote some support software, in 1989. Virtual fonts provide a way of telling TeX about something more complicated than just a one-to-one character mapping. The entities you define in a virtual font look like characters to TeX (they appear with their sizes in a font metric file), but the DVI processor may expand them to something quite different. You can use this facility just to remap characters, to make a composite font with glyphs drawn from several sources, or to build up an effect in arbitrarily complicated ways - a virtual font may contain anything which is legal in a DVI file. In practice, the most common use of virtual fonts is to remap PostScript fonts (see font metrics) or to build `fake' maths fonts.
It is important to realise that TeX itself does not see
virtual fonts; for every virtual font read by the DVI driver there
is a corresponding TFM file read by TeX. Virtual fonts are normally
created in a single ASCII vpl (Virtual Property List) file, which
includes both sets of information. The vptovf program is
then used to the create the binary TFM and VF files. The
commonest way (nowadays) of generating vpl files is to use the
fontinst package, which is described in detail
together with the discussion of
PostScript font metrics.
fonts/utilities/qdtexvpl.tar.gz is another utility for creating ad-hoc virtual
fonts.
\special commandsTeX provides the means to express things that device drivers can do, but about which TeX itself knows nothing. For example, TeX itself knows nothing about how to include PostScript figures into documents, or how to set the colour of printed text; but some device drivers do.
Such things are introduced to your document by means of \special
commands; all that TeX does with these commands is to expand their
arguments and then pass the command to the DVI file. In most
cases, there are macro packages provided (often with the driver) that
provide a comprehensible interface to the \special; for example,
there's little point including a figure if you leave no gap for it in
your text, and changing colour proves to be a particularly fraught
operation that requires real wizardry. LaTeX2e
has standard graphics and colour packages that make file inclusion,
rotation, scaling and colour via \specials all easy.
The allowable arguments of \special depend on the device driver
you're using. Apart from the examples above, there are \special
commands in the emTeX drivers (e.g., dvihplj, dviscr,
etc.) that will draw lines at arbitrary orientations, and
commands in dvitoln03 that permit the page to be set in
landscape orientation.
.dtx files)LaTeX2e, and many support macro packages, are now written in a
literate programming style,
with source and documentation in the
same file. This format, known as `doc', was originated by Frank
Mittelbach. The documented sources conventionally have the suffix
.dtx, and should normally be stripped of documentation
before use with LaTeX. Alternatively you can run LaTeX on a
.dtx file to produce a nicely formatted version of the
documented code. An installation script (with suffix
.ins) is usually provided, which needs the standard LaTeX2e
docstrip package (among other things, the installation
process strips all the comments that make up the documentation for
speed when loading the file into a running LaTeX system). Several
packages can be included in one .dtx file, with conditional
sections, and there facilities for indices of macros etc. Anyone can
write .dtx files; the format is explained in
The LaTeX Companion
(see books on TeX). There are
no programs yet to assist in composition.
.dtx files are not used by LaTeX after they have been
processed to produce .sty or .cls (or whatever)
files. They need not be kept with the working system; however, for
many packages the .dtx file is the primary source of
documentation, so you may want to keep .dtx files elsewhere.
A font consists of a number of glyphs. In order that the glyphs may be printed, there has to be some way of accessing them; in TeX they're arranged in a numerical order called an encoding, and their number in the encoding is used. For various reasons, Knuth chose rather eccentric encodings; in particular, he chose different encodings for different fonts.
When TeX version 3 arrived, some at least of the reasons for the eccentricity of Knuth's encodings went away, and at TUG's Cork meeting, an encoding for a set of 256 glyphs, for use in TeX text, was defined. The intention was that these glyphs should cover `most' European languages, in the sense of including all accented letters needed. (Knuth's CMR fonts missed things necessary for Icelandic, Polish and Sami, for example, but the Cork fonts have them.) LaTeX2e refers to the Cork encoding as T1, and provides the means to use fonts thus encoded to avoid problems with the interaction of accents and hyphenation (hyphenation of accented words).
The only Metafont-fonts that conform to the Cork encoding are the DC fonts (available as fonts/dc.tar.gz; ensure you have version 1.2, patch level 1, released in December 1995, or later). They look CM-like, and should be regarded as an interim version of a hypothetical set of EC fonts (which, it is hoped, will be available some time in 1996). Their serious disadvantage for the casual user is that they are large - each DC font is roughly twice the size of the corresponding CM font; what's more until corresponding fonts for mathematics are produced, the CM fonts must be retained.
The Cork encoding is also implemented by the PSNFSS system, for PostScript fonts.
To aid the archiving and retrieval of of TeX-related files, a TUG working group developed the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network (CTAN). Each CTAN site has identical material, and maintains authoritative versions of its material. These collections are extensive; in particular, almost everything mentioned in this article is archived at the CTAN sites, even if its location isn't explicitly stated.
The CTAN sites are currently ftp.dante.de (129.206.100.192) and ftp.tex.ac.uk (128.232.1.87). The organisation of TeX files on these sites is identical and starts at tex-archive/. To reduce network load, please use the CTAN site or mirror closest to you. A complete and current list of CTAN sites and known mirrors can be obtained by using the finger utility on `user' ctan@ftp.tex.ac.uk or ctan@ftp.dante.de; it is also available as file CTAN.sites
To find software at a CTAN site, use anonymous ftp to the host,
and then execute the command `quote site index <term>' (see
finding files for details).
The email server
ftpmail@ftp.dante.de provides an ftp-like interface through
mail. Send a message containing just the line `help' to your
nearest server for details of use.
Users on BITNET may access anonymous ftp for some files
indirectly by sending mail to BITFTP@PUCC.BITNET. Send a
message containing the line `help' to this address for more
information.
There is also the DECUS TeX collection of
material for VMS, Unix, MSDOS, and the Macintosh.
It is available via anonymous ftp from
wuarchive.wustl.edu (128.252.135.4) in
decus/tex/. It can also be obtained from the DECUS Library
(reference number VS0058) in the US, or through your DECUS office
outside of the US. To contact the DECUS Library, send mail or telephone:
DECUSor send electronic mail for information to the DECUS TeX Collection Editor, Ted Nieland (nieland@ted.hcst.com).
LIBRARY ORDER PROCESSING
334 South Street, SHR3-1/T25
Shrewsbury, MA 01545-4195
USA
Tel: 800-DECUS55 (within the USA, for information)
Fax: (+1) 508-841-3373 (for inquiries)
Finally, of course, the TeX user who has no access to any sort of network may buy a copy of the archive on CDROM (see TeX CDROMs).
Use anonymous ftp to any CTAN archive
(see sources of software) and retrieve
the file README.uploads in the root directory. It contains
instructions for uploading files and notifying the appropriate people
for that site.
If you cannot use ftp, mail your contribution to
ctan@urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de and it will be passed along. You will make
everyone's life easier if you choose a descriptive and unique name for
your submission, so it's probably a good idea to check that your style
file's name is not already in use by means of the
`site index'
command (finding files in the archives).
A comprehensive list of Metafont fonts is posted to comp.fonts and to comp.text.tex, roughly every six weeks, by Lee Quin (lee@sq.sq.com); it is available as info/metafont-list
The list contains details both of commercial fonts and of fonts
available via anonymous ftp. Most of the fonts are available via
anonymous ftp from the CTAN archives
(see sources of software).
If you don't have access to the Internet, you can get the CTAN collections on a CDROM. Even those who do will find it very convenient to have large quantities of TeX-related files to hand.
Prime Time Freeware produced TeXcetera 1.1 in July 1994, which is a snapshot of CTAN taken in June 1994. Regular updates are planned. The material is all compressed in ZIP format to fit it all on one CD, and to avoid the limitations of the ISO 9660 file system directory. You can buy the CD from:
Prime Time Freewareor from many CDROM resellers, or the TUG office. Price will be around $60. Please note that PTF is not a big commercial firm, and is a good friend of the TeX community.
370 Altair Way, Suite 150
Sunnyvale CA 94086
USA
Tel: (+1) 408 433 9662
Fax: (+1) 408 433 0727
Email: ptf@cfcl.com
Walnut Creek CDROM also provide a two-disc CDROM set, holding 1000Mb of TeX-related information. Information about the CDROM is available at http://www.cdrom.com/titles/tex.html, which also has a link to an ordering page. Walnut Creek's address, etc., are:
Walnut Creek CDROM
4041 Pike Lane, Ste D-www
Concord, CA 94520
USA
Tel: (+1) 510 674-0783 or 800 786-9907 (within the USA and Canada)
Fax: (+1) 510 674-0821
Email: info@cdrom.com (for questions) and orders@cdrom.com (for orders)
If you want a ready-to-run TeX system on CDROM, one is available for MSDOS only (so far). The Dutch TeX Users Group (NTG) publish the whole 4AllTeX workbench on a 2-CDROM set packed with all the MSDOS TeX software, macros and fonts you can want. It is available from NTG direct (see user groups), from TUG for $40 and from UK TUG for \pounds30 (a manual is included). It is a useful resource for anyone to browse, not just for MSDOS users.
ftp are available in the document
systems/unix/unixtex.ftp
A useful set of binaries for various common Unix systems is to be found as part of the teTeX distribution (systems/unix/teTeX/distrib/binaries.tar.gz); teTeX will compile on most Unix systems, though it was originally developed for use under Linux (see below).
A second package, gTeX, runs under MSDOS or Windows (and its users speak well of it). It is available from systems/msdos/gtex.tar.gz
TUG (and some of the other user groups) offer all freely-available TeX software for the PC. A catalogue is available free from TUG.
Another partly shareware program is CMacTeX (available as systems/mac/cmactex.tar.gz), put together by Tom Kiffe. This is much closer to the Unix TeX setup (it uses dvips, for instance).
If anonymous ftp is not available to you, send a message
containing the line `help' to
atari@atari.archive.umich.edu
You can also order a CDROM containing this and other Amiga software from Walnut Creek CDROM, telephone (+1) 510-947-5997.
ftp from ftp.math.utah.edu
(128.110.198.34) in pub/tex/pub/web
There are good TeX-writing environments and editors for most operating systems; some are described below, but this is only a personal selection:
TeXtelmExtel (systems/msdos/emtex-contrib/TeXtelmExtel.tar.gz) is a Shell for emTeX or WTeX and related tools under Windows. It includes a simple multiple-document editor, a built-in spelling checker, automatic OEM/ANSI character conversion, user-definable point-and-click Templates, support for the forward and inverse search mechanism of DVI driver for Windows and for automatic font generation. Besides the predefined tools, up to 10 user-defined tools can be set up.
On a PC with large enough memory, a version of GNU emacs, that will run under Windows, is available; thus you can also use AUCTeX under Windows.
Y&Y's commercial (and high-quality) Windows previewer, dviwindo, can be used as a good TeX shell, calling programs such as TeX, drivers, and editors (Y&Y supply the public domain PE, and recommend the commercial Epsilon) from customisable menus (see commercial vendors for details of Y&Y).
Scientific Word is a WYSIWYG editing program, strong on maths, which uses LaTeX for output (see vendors for contact address).
There is another set of shell programs to help you manipulate BibTeX databases.
There are many commercial implementations of TeX. The first appeared not long after TeX itself appeared. Of the vendors, ArborText (formerly Textset) and Personal TeX are those who have survived longest (since the mid or early 80s).
What follows is probably an incomplete list. Naturally, no warranty or fitness for purpose is implied by the inclusion of any vendor in this list. The source of the information is given to provide some clues to its currency.
In general, a commercial implementation will come `complete', that is, with suitable previewers and printer drivers. They normally also have extensive documentation (i.e., not just the TeXbook!) and some sort of support service. In some cases this is a toll free number (probably applicable only within the USA and or Canada), but others also have email, and normal telephone and fax support.
ArborText IncSource: TUGboat 15(1) (1994)
1000 Victors Way
Suite 400
Ann Arbor MI 48108
USA
Tel: (+1) 313-996-3566
Fax: (+1) 313-996-3573
Northlake Software, Inc.Source: Email from Pat Rau, November 1994
812 SW Washington, Ste 1100
Portland, OR 97201
USA
Tel: (+1) 503-228-3383
Fax: (+1) 503-228-5662
Email: rau@nls.com
The Kinch Computer Co.Source: Email from Richard Kinch, December 1995
6994 Pebble Beach Court
Lake Worth FL 33467
USA
Tel: (+1) 561-966-8400 Fax: (+1) 561-966-0692 Email: kinch@holonet.net
Web: http://www.emi.net/ kinch
Y&Y, Inc.Source: Y&Y announcement, February 1995
45 Walden Street
Concord MA 01742
USA
Tel: 800-742-4059 (within the USA)
Tel: (+1) 508-371-3286
Fax: (+1) 508-371-2004
Email: sales-help@YandY.com and tech-help@YandY.com
Web: http://www.YandY.com/
Personal TeX IncSource: TUGboat 16(2) (1995)
12 Madrona Street
Mill Valley, CA 94941
USA
Tel: 800-808-7906 (within the USA)
Fax: (+1) 415-388-8865
Email: pti@crl.com
Web: http://www.crl.com/ pti/
MicroPress IncSource: MicroPress home page, April 1996
68-30 Harrow Street
Forest Hills, NY 11375
USA
Tel: (+1) 718-575-1816
Fax: (+1) 718-575-8038
Email: support@micropress-inc.com Web: http://www.micropress-inc.com/
Micro Programs, Inc.Source: AMS listing, November 1994
251 Jackson Ave.
Syosset, NY 11791
USA
Tel: (+1) 516-921-1351
Email: sales@microprograms.com
Dr Christopher Mabb
Scientific Word Ltd.
98 Pont Adam
Ruabon
Wrexham
Clwyd, LL14 6EF
UK
Tel: 0345 660340 (within the UK)
Tel: +44 1978 824684
Fax: 01978 823066 (within the UK)
Email: christopher@sciword.demon.co.uk
TCI Software Research Inc.Source: Mail from Christopher Mabb, November 1995
1190 Foster Road
Las Cruces NM 88001-3739
USA
Tel: (+1) 505-522-4600
Fax: (+1) 505-522-0116
Email: info@tcisoft.com
Web: http://www.tcisoft.com/tcisoft.html
Blue Sky ResearchSource: TUGboat 15(1) (1994)
534 SW Third Avenue
Portland, OR 97204
USA
Tel: 800-622-8398 (within the USA)
Tel: (+1) 503-222-9571
Fax: (+1) 503-222-1643
Email: sales@bluesky.com
Web: http://www.bluesky.com/
Radical Eye SoftwareSource: Mail from Tom Rokicki, November 1994
PO Box 2081
Stanford, CA 94309
USA
The best public domain DVI to PostScript conversion program which runs under many operating systems is Tom Rokicki's dvips. dvips is written in C and ports easily to other operating systems; it is available as dviware/dvips.tar.gz
VMS versions are available through the DECUS library (see sources of software), and also from CTAN: systems/vms/Alpha/dvips555_axp_exe.zip (for Alpha-based machines), systems/vms/VAX/dvips555_vax_exe.zip (for VAX machines); support files are available in systems/vms/dvips555_support.zip, and a set of fonts for use with LaTeX2e are available in systems/vms/dvips_fontsupport.zip
A precompiled version for MSDOS is available from systems/msdos/dviware/dvips.tar.gz
Karl Berry's version of dvips (called dvipsk) has a configure script and path searching code similar to that in his other programs (e.g., web2c); it is available from dviware/dvipsk.tar.gz
Another good portable program is dvitops by James Clark, which is also written in C and will compile under Unix, MSDOS, VMS, and Primos; however, it does not support virtual fonts. It is available from dviware/dvitops.tar.gz
Macintosh users can use either the excellent drivers built into OzTeX or Textures, or a port of dvips in the CMacTeX package.
The emTeX package (see TeX systems) contains a driver for the LaserJet, dvihplj.
Version 2.10 of the Beebe drivers supports the LaserJet. These drivers will compile under Unix, VMS, and on the Atari ST and DEC-20's, and are available from dviware/beebe.tar.gz
Karl Berry's dviljk, which has the same path-searching code as his dvipsk (see DVI to PostScript programs), is available in dviware/dviljk.tar.gz
EmTeX and gTeX for the PC, and OzTeX for the Macintosh, all come with previewers that can be used on those platforms. There is a good OS/2 Presentation Manager previewer in emTeX, and a public domain Windows previewer (dviware/dviwin.tar.gz). Commercial PC TeX packages (see commercial vendors) have good MSDOS and Windows previewers.
Previewers available for other operating systems include:
Karl Berry's version of xdvi, called xdvik, has features analogous to his dvipsk (see DVI to PostScript programs); it is available in dviware/xdvik.tar.gz
(X)Fig is a menu driven tool that allows you to draw objects on the screen of an X workstation. transfig is a set of tools which translate the code fig produces to other graphics languages including PostScript and the LaTeX picture environment. They are available in graphics/xfig.tar.gz and graphics/transfig.tar.gz
Fig is supported by Micah Beck (beck@cs.cornell.edu) and transfig is maintained by Brian Smith (bvsmith@lbl.gov). Another tool for fig conversion is fig2mf which generates Metafont code from fig input. It is available in graphics/fig2mf.tar.gz
TeXCAD is a program for the PC which enables the user to draw diagrams
on screen using a mouse or arrow keys, with an on-screen menu of available
picture-elements. Its output is code for the LaTeX picture environment.
Optionally, it can be set to include lines at all angles using
the emTeX driver-family
\specials.
TeXCAD is part of the emTeX distribution.
A Linux port of the program, systems/unix/linux/xtexcad-2.1.tar.z, is reported also to run on other Unix operating systems.
For Unix, ispell is probably the program of choice. It is
available in support/ispell.tar.gz; beware of any version with a number
4.x - such versions represent a divergent version of the source
which lacks many useful facilities of the 3.x series.
For MSDOS, there are several programs. amspell can be called from within an editor (available as support/amspell.tar.gz). jspell is an extended version of ispell (available as support/jspell.tar.gz).
For the Macintosh, Excalibur is the program of choice. It will run in native mode on both sorts of Macintosh, and is available as systems/mac/support/excalibur/Excalibur-20-sea.hqx (there are other dictionaries in the same directory).
For VMS, a spell checker can be found in support/vmspell.tar.gz
VorTeX (available in support/vortex.tar.gz) is a package of programs written at the University of California at Berkeley, and was described by Michael A. Harrison in ``News from the VorTeX project'' in TUGboat 10(1), pp. 11-14, 1989. It includes several nice previewers and some emacs modes for TeX and BibTeX. The VorTeX distribution is not maintained, and now looks distinctly long in the tooth (it was never upgraded to TeX version 3).
VorTeX needed a separate workstation to run TeX in the background; modern PCs for the home can provide more processor power (than was available to VorTeX) in a single box. This fact has been recognised by Blue Sky Research in their `Lightning Textures' (which runs on a Macintosh in a somewhat similar way) and by TCI Software Research in `Scientific Word' (see commercial vendors), and is also the basis of many of the other environments mentioned in `editors and shells'.
Literate programming is the combination of documentation and source together in a fashion suited for reading by human beings. In general, literate programs combine source and documentation in a single file. Literate programming tools then parse the file to produce either readable documentation or compilable source. The WEB style of literate programming was created by D. E. Knuth during the development of his TeX typesetting software.
Discussion of literate programming is conducted in the newsgroup comp.programming.literate, which is gatewayed to the mailing list litprog@shsu.edu (see subscribing to mailing lists for details). The literate programming FAQ is stored as help/LitProg-FAQ
TeX is written in the programming language WEB; WEB is a tool to implement the concept of ``literate programming''.
CWEB, a WEB for C programs, written by Silvio Levy, is available as web/c_cpp/cweb.tar.gz
Spidery WEB supports many languages including Ada, awk, and C. It was written by Norman Ramsey and, while not in the public domain, is usable free. It is available in web/spiderweb.tar.gz
FWEB is a version for Fortran, Ratfor, and C written by John Krommes. It is available in web/fweb.tar.gz
SchemeWEB is a Unix filter that translates SchemeWEB into LaTeX source or Scheme source. It was written by John Ramsdell and is available in web/schemeweb.tar.gz
APLWEB is a version of WEB for APL and is available in web/apl/aplweb.tar.gz
FunnelWeb is a version of WEB that is language independent. It is available in web/funnelweb.tar.gz
Other language independent versions of WEB are nuweb (which is written in ANSI C), available in web/nuweb.tar.gz, and noweb, available in web/noweb.tar.gz
A WEB for plain TeX macro files, using noweb, has recently been made available in web/tweb.tar.gz
-ms and -man macros, plus most eqn and some
tbl preprocessor commands. Anything fancier needs to be
done by hand. Two style files are provided. There is also a man page
(which converts very well to LaTeX...). The program is
copyrighted but free. An enhanced version of this program,
tr2latex, is available in support/tr2latex.tar.gz
The DECUS TeX distribution (see sources of software) also contains a program which converts troff to TeX.
Glenn Geers of the University of Sydney, Australia (glenn@qed.physics.su.oz.au) is translating wp2latex into C and adding some WordPerfect 5.1 features, in particular its equation handling. His work is in the glenn subdirectory of support/wp2latex.tar.gz
pcwritex.arc, from support/pcwritex.tar.gz, is a
print driver for PC-Write that ``prints'' a PC-Write
V2.71 document to a TeX-compatible disk file. It was written by Peter
Flynn at University College, Cork, Republic of Ireland.
In spite of the directory name, it also contains a shell script to convert BibTeX to refer as well. The collection is not maintained.
Translation to RTF may be done (for a somewhat constrained set of LaTeX documents) by TeX2RTF, which can produce ordinary RTF, Windows Help RTF (as well as HTML, conversion to HTML). TeX2RTF is supported on various Unix platforms and under Windows 3.1; it is available from support/tex2rtf.tar.gz
An FAQ that deals specifically with conversions between TeX-based formats and word processor formats is regularly posted to comp.text.tex, is available via http://www.kfa-juelich.de/isr/1/texconv.html and is archived as help/wp-conv/texcnven.txt
A group at Ohio State University (USA) is working on a common document format based on SGML, with the ambition that any format could be translated to or from this one. FrameMaker provides ``import filters'' to aid translation from alien formats (presumably including TeX) to Framemaker's own.
The aim here is to emulate the Unix nroff, which formats text as best it can for the screen, from the same input as the Unix typesetting program troff.
Ralph Droms (droms@bucknell.edu) has a style file and a program that provide the LaTeX equivalent of nroff, though it doesn't do a good job with tables and mathematics. The software is available in support/txt.tar.gz; the original dvi2tty often does an acceptable job and is available in dviware/dvi2tty.tar.gz
Another possibility is to use screen.sty (available as macros/latex209/contrib/misc/screen.sty). Use a dvi2tty program of some kind; you might try dviware/crudetype.tar.gz as well. Another possibility is to use the LaTeX-to-ASCII conversion program, l2a (support/l2a.tar.gz), although this is really more of a de-TeXing program.
The canonical de-TeXing program is detex (support/detex.tar.gz), which removes all comments and control sequences from its input before writing it to its output. Its original purpose was to prepare input for a dumb spelling checker.
SGML is a very important system for document storage and interchange, but it has no formatting features; its companion ISO standard DSSSL (http://www.jclark.com/dsssl/) is designed for writing transformations and formatting, but this has not yet been widely implemented. Some SGML authoring systems (e.g., SoftQuad Author/Editor) have formatting abilities, and there are high-end specialist SGML typesetting systems (e.g., Miles33's Genera). However, the majority of SGML users probably transform the source to an existing typesetting system when they want to print. TeX is a good candidate for this. There are three approaches to writing a translator:
If these packages don't meet your needs for an average SGML typesetting job, you need the big commercial stuff.
Since HTML is simply an example of SGML, we do not need a specific system for HTML. However, Nathan Torkington (Nathan.Torkington@vuw.ac.nz) developed html2latex from the HTML parser in NCSA's Xmosaic package. The program takes an HTML file and generates a LaTeX file from it. The conversion code is subject to NCSA restrictions, but the whole source is available as support/html2latex.tar.gz
Jonathan Fine (J.Fine@pmms.cam.ac.uk) hopes to release, during 1996, his macro package that directly interprets and typesets an SGML source file.
Michel Goossens and Janne Saarela published a very useful summary of SGML, and of public domain tools for writing and manipulating it, in TUGboat 16(2).
TeX is a typesetting language, not a markup system. With properly-used LaTeX, you may be luckier, but don't expect a free lunch. Remember that a) if you want a really good Web document, you had better redesign it from scratch, and b) HTML (even HTML3) has pretty poor `typesetting' facilities, and anything beyond the trivial will probably need to end up a graphic.
LaTeX2HTML (support/latex2html.tar.gz) is a package by Nikos Drakos (mostly of perl scripts) that breaks up a LaTeX document into one or more components, and links them together so that they can be read over the World-Wide Web as an hypertext document. It defines a mapping between LaTeX intra-document references and hyperlinks, and extends the mechanisms to permit reference to other (possibly remote) documents and other Internet resources. It translates LaTeX accented and other characters (as best it can) to things that World-Wide Web browsers can display, and translates mathematics (and other things that browsers can't deal with) to images that can be loaded in-line into the hypertext document.
LaTeX2HTML needs Perl, the PBM utilities, dvips, GhostScript, and other sundries; it assumes it is running on a Unix system. Michel Goossens and Janne Saarela published a detailed discussion of LaTeX2HTML, and how to tailor it, in TUGboat 16(2).
There are two alternative strategies:
If you want on-line hypertext with a (La)TeX source, probably on the World Wide Web, consider four technologies (which overlap):
\special
commands); there are supporting macro packages for plain TeX and
LaTeX).
The HyperTeX project aims to extend the functionality of all the
LaTeX cross-referencing commands (including the table of contents)
to produce \special commands which are parsed by DVI processors
conforming to the HyperTeX guidelines;
it provides general hypertext links, including those
to external documents.
The HyperTeX specification says that conformant viewers/translators
must recognize the following set of \special commands:
html:<a href = "href_string">
html:<a name = "name_string">
html:</a>
html:<img src = "href_string">
html:<base href = "href_string">
The href, name and end commands are used to do the basic hypertext operations of establishing links between sections of documents.
Further details are available on http://xxx.lanl.gov/hypertex/; there are two commonly-used implementations of the specification, a modified xdvi and a modified dvips. Output from the latter may be used in a modified GhostScript or Acrobat Distiller.
In the simplest case, use your DVI to PostScript driver, and run the
result through Adobe's Acrobat Distiller; even simpler, if
you use a Mac or Windows TeX system, is to install Acrobat Exchange,
and use PDFwriter like a printer from your application. The latter is
a dead end, though fine for simple documents, since you can't insert
extra hyperlinks in the PDF output. For that, you need the
Distiller route, which supports a special PostScript operator called
pdfmark, for passing through information to the PDF.
To translate all the LaTeX cross-referencing into Acrobat
links, you need a LaTeX package to suitably redefine
the internal commands. There are two of these for LaTeX2e, both
based on the HyperTeX specification
(see Making hypertext documents from TeX):
Sebastian Rahtz's hyperref (available from
macros/latex/contrib/supported/hyperref.tar.gz), and Michael Mehlich's
hyper (available from macros/latex/contrib/supported/hyper.tar.gz). You use
dvihps (a modified dvips)
to translate the DVI into PostScript acceptable to
Distiller. Alternatively, if you know you only want Acrobat,
hyperref also has a `native PDF' mode, which works with
plain dvips (or most other translators) and gives access to
all the functionality of pdfmark.
Sadly, there are no free implementations of Distiller, nor any signs of them. GhostScript (versions 3.51 onwards) can display and print PDF files, however, if you are on a platform with no Acrobat Reader. You may see a DVI to PDF translator soon, but do not hold your breath.
Metafont allows you to create your own fonts, and most TeX users
will never need to use it. Metafont, unlike TeX, requires some
customisation: each output device for which you will be generating
fonts needs a mode associated with it. Modes are defined using the
mode_def convention described on page 94 of The Metafontbook
(see TeX-related books). You will need
a file, which conventionally called local.mf, containing all the
mode_defs you will be using. If local.mf doesn't already
exist, Karl Berry's collection of modes,
available as fonts/modes/modes.mf, is a good starting point
(it can be used as a `local.mf' without modification in a `big
enough' implementation of Metafont). Lists of
settings for various output devices are also published periodically in
TUGboat (see TUG). Now create
a plain base
file using inimf, plain.mf, and local.mf:
% inimf This is METAFONT... **plain # you type plain (output) *input local # you type this (output) *dump # you type this Beginning to dump on file plain... (output)This will create a base file named plain.base (or something similar; for example, it will be PLAIN.BAS on MSDOS systems) which should be moved to the directory containing the base files on your system (note that some systems have two or more such directories, one for each `size' of Metafont used).
Now you need to make sure Metafont loads this new base when it starts up. If
Metafont loads the plain base by default on your system, then you're
ready to go. Under Unix (using the default web2c
)
this does indeed happen, but we could for instance define a command
mf which executes virmf &plain loading the plain base
file.
The usual way to create a font with plain Metafont is to start
it with the line
\mode=<mode name>; mag=<magnification>; input <font file name>in response to the `**' prompt or on the Metafont command line. (If
<mode name> is unknown or omitted, the mode defaults to `proof' and
Metafont will produce an output file called \File|<font file
name>.2602gf) The <magnification>| is a floating point number or
`magstep' (magsteps are defined in The Metafontbook and \emph{The
TeXbook}). If mag=<magnification> is omitted, then the default
is 1 (magstep 0). For example, to generate cmr10 at 12pt for an epson
printer you would type
mf \mode=epson; mag=magstep 1; input cmr10Note that under Unix the
\ and ; characters must usually be quoted or
escaped, so this would typically look something like
mf '\mode=epson; mag=magstep 1; input cmr10'
If you don't have inimf or need a special mode that isn't
in the base, you can put its commands in a file (e.g.,
ln03.mf) and invoke it on the fly with the \smode command.
For example, to create cmr10.300gf for an LN03 printer, using
the file
% This is ln03.mf as of 2/27/90 % mode_def courtesy of John Sauter proofing:=0; fontmaking:=1; tracingtitles:=0; pixels_per_inch:=300; blacker:=0.65; fillin:=-0.1; o_correction:=.5;(note the absence of the
mode_def and enddef commands), you would
type
mf \smode="ln03"; input cmr10This technique isn't one you should regularly use, but it may prove useful if you acquire a new printer and want to experiment with parameters, or for some other reason are regularly editing the parameters you're using. Once you've settled on an appropriate set of parameters, you should use them to rebuild the base file that you use.
A summary of the above written by Geoffrey Tobin, and tips about common pitfalls in using Metafont, is available as info/metafont-for-beginners.tex
Metafont produces from its run three files, a metrics (TFM) file, a generic font (GF) file, and a log file; all of these files have the same base name as does the input (e.g., if the input file was cmr10.mf, the outputs will be cmr10.tfm, and cmr10.log).
For TeX to use the font, you need a TFM file, so you need to keep that. However, you are likely to generate the same font at more than one magnification, and each time you do so you'll (incidentally) generate another TFM file; these files are all the same, so you only need to keep one of them.
To preview or to produce printed output, the DVI processor will need a font raster file; this is what the GF file provides. However, while there used (once upon a time) to be DVI processors that could use GF files, modern processors use packed raster (PK) files. Therefore, you need to generate a PK file from the GF file; the program gftopk does this for you, and once you've done that you may throw the GF file away.
The log file should never need to be used, unless there was some sort of problem in the Metafont run, and need not be ordinarily kept.
Most people these days start using TeX with a 300 dots-per-inch (dpi) laser printer, and Computer Modern bitmap fonts for this resolution are supplied with most TeX packages. There are also two such sets available on CTAN: fonts/cm/pk/pk300.zip (for write-black printer engines) and fonts/cm/pk/pk300w.zip (for write-white engines). However, some users want to send their work to high quality typesetting machines (typically with a resolution of 1270 dpi or greater); it is also becoming more common to use a 600 dpi laser printer. Why don't the archives or suppliers provide bitmap fonts at these sizes? There are two reasons:
So what to do? You can build the fonts you need yourself with Metafont: this isn't at all hard, and some drivers help you (dvips, and the emTeX drivers) construct the Metafont commands. You might need to look at Karl Berry's collection of Metafont modes (fonts/modes/modes.mf). Alternatively, if it is a PostScript device you have, consider using the fonts in Type 1 font format. You can buy all the Computer Modern fonts in outline form from Blue Sky Research, Kinch or Y&Y (commercial vendors for addresses), or you can use Basil Malyshev's public domain versions in fonts/cm/ps-type1.tar.gz (the Paradissa collection is complete, but has largely been replaced by the better BaKoMa collection).
In order to use PostScript fonts, TeX needs metric (called TFM) files. Several sets of metrics are available from the archives; for mechanisms for generating new ones, see metrics for PostScript fonts. You also need the fonts themselves; PostScript printers come with a set of fonts built in, but to extend your repertoire you almost invariably need to buy from one of the many commercial font vendors (see, for example, choice of fonts).
If you use LaTeX2e, the best way to get PostScript fonts into your
document is to use the PSNFSS package maintained by Sebastian Rahtz
and Alan Jeffrey (available in macros/latex/packages/psnfss.tar.gz); it's supported by
the LaTeX3 project team, so bug reports can and should be submitted.
PSNFSS gives you a set of packages for changing the default
roman, sans-serif and typewriter fonts; e.g., times.sty will set
up Times Roman, Helvetica and Courier in place of Computer Modern,
while avant.sty just changes the sans-serif family to
AvantGarde. To go with these packages, you will need the font metric
files (watch out for encoding problems! see
metrics for PostScript fonts)
and font description (.fd) files for each font family you
want to use. These can be obtained from fonts/psfonts.tar.gz, arranged by
vendor (e.g., Adobe, Monotype, etc.). For convenience,
metrics for the common `35' PostScript fonts found in most printers
are provided with PSNFSS, packaged as macros/latex/packages/psnfss/lw35nfss.zip
For older versions of LaTeX there are various schemes, of which the simplest to use is probably the PSLaTeX macros distributed with dvips.
For plain TeX, you load whatever fonts you like; if the encoding of
the fonts is not the same as Computer Modern it will be up to you to
redefine various macros and accents, or you can use the font
re-encoding mechanisms available in many drivers and in
ps2pk and afm2tfm.
Victor Eijkhout's sophisticated Lollipop package (macros/lollipop.tar.gz) supports declaration of font families and styles in a similar way to LaTeX's NFSS, and so is easy to use with PostScript fonts.
Some common problems encountered are discussed elsewhere (see problems with PS fonts).
Most TeX previewers only display bitmap PK fonts. If you want to preview documents using PostScript fonts, you have three choices:
Font vendors such as Adobe supply metric files for each font, in AFM
(Adobe Font Metric) form; these can be converted to TFM
(TeX Font Metric) form. The CTAN archives have prebuilt metrics
which will be more than enough for many people (fonts/psfonts.tar.gz;
beware - this directory is at the root of a huge tree), but you may
need to do the conversion yourself if you have special needs or
acquire a new font. One important question is the encoding of
(Latin character) fonts; while we all more or less agree about the
position of about 96 characters in fonts (the basic ASCII set), the
rest of the (typically) 256 vary. The most obvious problems are with
floating accents and special characters such as the `pounds sterling'
sign. There are three ways of dealing with this: either you change the
TeX macros which reference the characters (not much fun, and
error-prone); or you change the encoding of the font (easier than you
might think); or you use
virtual fonts
to pretend to
TeX that the encoding is the same as it is used to. If you use
LaTeX2e, it allows for changing the encoding in TeX; read the
LaTeX Companion
(see TeX-related books) for more details.
In practice, if you do much non-English (but Latin script)
typesetting, you are strongly recommended to use the fontenc
package with option `T1' to select T1
(`Cork')
encoding.
Alan Jeffrey's fontinst package (fonts/utilities/fontinst.tar.gz) is an AFM to TFM converter written in TeX; it is used to generate the files used by LaTeX2e's PSNFSS package to support use of PostScript fonts. It is a sophisticated package, not for the faint-hearted, but is powerful enough to cope with most needs. Much of its power relies on the use of virtual fonts.
For slightly simpler problems, Rokicki's afm2tfm, distributed with dvips (dviware/dvips.tar.gz), is fast and efficient; note that the metrics and styles that come with dvips are not currently LaTeX2e compatible, but Karl Berry plans to distribute metrics directly compatible with PSNFSS in his dvipsk package.
For the Macintosh, there is a program called EdMetrics which does the job (and more). It comes with the Textures distribution, but is in fact free software, available as systems/mac/textures/utilities/EdMetrics.sea.hqx
MSDOS users can buy (see commercial implementations) Y&Y's Font Manipulation Tools package which includes a powerful afmtotfm program among many other goodies.
For the typical LaTeX user trying to use the
PSNFSS
package, three questions often arise.
First, you have to declare to the DVI driver that you are using
PostScript fonts; in the case of dvips, this means adding
lines to the psfonts.map file. Otherwise, dvips will try
to find PK
files. If the font isn't built into the printer, you have to acquire
it (in many cases this means buying it from a commercial supplier!).
You then have to instruct the driver to download it with each job (the
mechanism depends on your driver). So it's no
good just installing the metrics for Optima and expecting it to
work. You have to pay hard cash for the font itself, which will come
(for Unix and MSDOS users) in pfb (Printer Font Binary) form.
Second, you cannot expect your previewer to suddenly start displaying
PostScript fonts; most of them only know about PK bitmap fonts
such as Computer Modern. ps2pk (fonts/utilities/ps2pk.tar.gz) can create
these from the pfb file you have bought; this would also let you use
the fonts with non-PostScript device drivers such as the emTeX
ones. You are responsible for making sure you are not breaking the
licence restrictions on font you bought.
Third, the stretch and shrink between words is a function of the font metric; it is not specified in AFM files, so different converters choose different values. The PostScript metrics that come with PSNFSS used to produce quite tight setting, but they were revised in mid 1995 to produce a compromise between American and European practice. Really sophisticated users may not find even the new the values to their taste, and want to override them. Even the casual user may find more hyphenation or overfull boxes than CMR produces; but CMR is extremely generous.
If you are interested in text alone, you can use any of over 20,000 fonts(!) in Adobe Type 1 format (called `PostScript fonts' in the TeX world and `ATM fonts' in the DTP world), or any of several hundred fonts in TrueType format. That is, provided of course, that your previewer and printer driver support scalable outline fonts.
TeX itself only cares about metrics, not the actual
character programs. You just need to create a TeX metric file
TFM using some tool such as afm2tfm, afmtotfm
(from Y&Y, see commercial implementations)
or fontinst. For the previewer or printer driver you need the
actual outline font files themselves (pfa for Display PostScript, pfb
for ATM on IBM PC, Mac outline font files on Macintosh).
If you also need mathematics, then you are severely limited by the demands that TeX makes of maths fonts (for details, see the paper by B.K.P. Horn in TUGboat 14(3)). For maths, then, there are relatively few choices:
msam and msbm symbol sets).
The planned `Lucida Bright Expert' (14 fonts)
adds seriffed fixed width, another handwriting font,
smallcaps, bold maths, upright `maths italic', etc., to the set
The distribution includes support for use with plain TeX and
LaTeX 2.09. Support under LaTeX2e is provided in
PSNFSS
thanks to Sebastian Rahtz.
plain TeX and LaTeX 2.09 (including code to link in Adobe Math
Pi 2 and Math Pi 6).
Support under LaTeX2e is provided in
PSNFSS
thanks to Sebastian Rahtz.
(A similar development by Thomas Esser, using the Adobe Palatino fonts, is available from systems/unix/teTeX/updates/texmf/mathppl.sh)
All of the first three font sets are available in formats suitable for IBM PC/Windows, Macintosh and Unix/NeXT from Y&Y and from Blue Sky Research (see commercial suppliers for details). The MathTime fonts are also available from:
TeXploratorsThe very limited selection of maths font sets is a direct result of the fact that a maths font has to be explicitly designed for use with TeX and as a result it is likely to lose some of its appeal in other markets. Furthermore, the TeX market for commercial fonts is minute (in comparison, for example, to Microsoft TrueType font pack #1, which sold something like 10 million copies in a few weeks after release of Windows 3.1!).
1572 West Gray #377
Houston TX 77019
USA
Text fonts in Type 1 format are available from many vendors including Adobe, Monotype, Bitstream. Avoid cheap rip-offs: not only are you rewarding unethical behaviour, destroying the cottage industry of innovative type design, but you are also very likely to get junk. The fonts may not render well (or at all under ATM), may not have the `standard' complement of 228 glyphs, or may not include metric files (needed to make TFM files). Also, avoid TrueType fonts from all but the major vendors. TrueType fonts are an order of magnitude harder to `hint' properly than Type 1 fonts and hence TrueType fonts from places other than Microsoft and Apple may be suspect. In any case you may find other problems with TrueType fonts such as service bureaux not accepting jobs calling for them.
LaTeX2e has a standard package for graphics inclusion, rotation, colour, and other driver-related features. The package is documented in the second edition of the Lamport's LaTeX book (see TeX-related books), and is available in macros/latex/packages/graphics.tar.gz
If you don't use LaTeX2e, perhaps the best method is to use
the psfig macros written by Trevor Darrell, available in
graphics/psfig.tar.gz
You will also need a DVI to PostScript conversion program that
supports the \specials. The drivers mentioned in
DVI to PostScript programs do, and come
with a version of psfig ready to use with them. The psfig macros
work best with Encapsulated PostScript Files (EPS). In particular,
psfig will need the file to have a BoundingBox (see Appendix H of
the
PostScript Language Reference Manual). If you don't have an EPS
file, life can be difficult.
One point to note about including PostScript figures is that they are not part of the DVI file, but are only included when you use a DVI to PostScript conversion program. As a result, most DVI previewers will simply show the blank space TeX has reserved for your figure, not the figure itself.
There are two rather good documents on CTAN addressing of figure production with rather different emphasis. Anil K. Goel's, info/figsinltx.ps covers the different ways in which you might generate figures, and one the old (LaTeX 2.09) ways of including them into documents. Keith Reckdahl's, info/epslatex.ps, covers the standard LaTeX2e facilities, as well as some of the supporting packages, notably subfigure (macros/latex/contrib/supported/subfigure.tar.gz) and psfrag (macros/latex/contrib/supported/psfrag.tar.gz).
There are many packages to do pictures in (La)TeX itself (rather than
importing graphics created externally), ranging from simple use of
LaTeX picture environment, through enhancements like epic, to
sophisticated (but slow) drawing with PiCTeX. Depending on your type
of drawing, and setup, four systems should be at the top of your list
to look at:
\specials. You need a decent DVI to PostScript driver
(like dvips), but the results are worth it. The
well-documented package gives you not only low-level drawing
commands (and full colour) like lines, circles, shapes at arbitrary
coordinates, but also high-level macros for framing text, drawing
trees and matrices, 3D effects, and more.
Are you producing a thesis, and trying to obey regulations that were drafted in the typewriter era? Or are you producing copy for a journal that insists on double spacing for the submitted articles?
LaTeX is a typesetting system, so the appropriate design conventions are for ``real books''. If your requirement is from thesis regulations, find whoever is responsible for the regulations, and try to get the wording changed to cater for typeset theses (e.g., to say ``if using a typesetting system, aim to make your thesis look like a well-designed book''). (If your requirement is from a journal, you're probably even less likely to be able to get the rules changed, of course.)
If you fail to convince your officials, or want some inter-line space for copy-editing:
\baselinestretch:
\renewcommand{\baselinestretch}{1.2} may be enough to give
officials the impression you've kept to their regulations. Don't try
changing \baselineskip: its value is reset at any size-changing
command.
Thesis styles are usually very specific to your University, so it's usually not profitable to ask around for a package outside your own University. Since many Universities (in their eccentric way) still require double-spacing, you may care to refer to the question on double-spacing. If you want to write your own, a good place to start is the University of California style (available as macros/latex209/contrib/ucthesis.tar.gz), but it's not worth going to a lot of trouble. (If officials won't allow standard typographic conventions, you won't be able to produce an aesthetically pleasing document anyway!)
There are several LaTeX packages that purport to do this, but they all have their limitations because the TeX machine isn't really designed to solve this sort of problem. Piet van Oostrum has conducted a survey of the available packages; he recommends:
picins
\parpic(width,height)(x-off,y-off)[Options][Position]{Picture}
Paragraph text
All parameters except the Picture are optional. The picture can be positioned left or right, boxed with a rectangle, oval, shadowbox, dashed box, and a caption can be given which will be included in the list of figures.
Unfortunately (for those of us whose understanding of German is not good), the documentation is in German. Piet van Oostrum has written an English summary macros/latex209/contrib/picins/picins.txt
floatflt
\begin{floatingfigure}[options]{width of figure}
figure contents
\end{floatingfigure}
There is a (more or less similar) floatingtable environment.
The tables or figures can be set left or right, or alternating on even/odd pages in a double-sided document.
The package works with the multicol package, but doesn't work well
in the neighbourhood of list environments (unless you change your
LaTeX document).
wrapfig
\begin{wrapfigure}[height of figure in lines]{l|r}[overhang]{width}
figure, caption, etc.
\end{wrapfigure}
The syntax of the wraptable environment is similar.
Height can be omitted, in which case it will be calculated by the
package; the package will use the greater of the specified and the
actual width. The {l,r,etc.} parameter can also be
specified as i(nside) or o(utside) for two-sided
documents, and uppercase can be used to indicate that the picture
should float. The overhang allows the figure to be moved into the
margin. The figure or table will entered into the list of figures
or tables if you use the \caption command.
The environments do not work within list environments that end before the figure or table has finished, but can be used in a parbox or minipage, and in twocolumn format.
The standard LaTeX document classes define a small set of `page styles' which (in effect) specify head- and footlines for your document. The set defined is very restricted, but LaTeX is capable of much more; people occasionally set about employing LaTeX facilities to do the job, but that's quite unnecessary - Piet van Oostrum has already done the work.
The package is found in directory macros/latex/contrib/other/fancyheadings.tar.gz and provides simple mechanisms for defining pretty much every head- or footline variation you could want; the directory also contains some (rather good) documentation and one or two smaller packages. Fancyheadings also deals with the tedious behaviour of the standard styles with initial pages (Qref{Q-ps@empty}), by enabling you to define different page styles for initial and for body pages.
A good way is to use Rainer Schöpf's verbatim.sty,
which provides the command \verbatiminput that takes a file name
as argument. This package is available as part of macros/latex/packages/tools.tar.gz
Another way is to use the alltt environment, which requires
alltt.sty (which is now part of LaTeX).
The moreverb package (macros/latex/contrib/supported/moreverb.tar.gz) extends the
facilities of verbatim package), providing a listing
environment and a \listinginput command, which line-number the text
of the file.
Making an index is not trivial; what to index, and how to index it, is
difficult to decide, and uniform implementation is difficult to
achieve. You will need to mark all items to be indexed in your text
(typically with \index commands).
It is not practical to sort a large index within TeX, so a post-processing program is used to sort the output of one TeX run, to be included into the document at the next run.
The following programs are available:
The Makeindex documentation is a good source of information on how to create your own index. Makeindex can be used with some TeX macro packages other than LaTeX, such as Eplain.
glotex) in indexing/glo+idxtex.tar.gz
There are other programs called texindex, notably one that comes with the Texinfo distribution.
plain TeXThe file macros/eplain/btxmac.tex contains macros and documentation
for using BibTeX with plain TeX, either directly or with
Eplain.
See the use of BibTeX for more
information about BibTeX itself.
A powerful package which allows the typesetting of polyphonic and other multiple-stave music is MusicTeX, written by Daniel Taupin (taupin@rsovax.lps.u-psud.fr). It is available in macros/musictex.tar.gz
In the recent past, Daniel (as well as with various other people, notably Ross Mitchell and Andreas Egler) have been working on a development of MusicTeX, known as MusiXTeX. MusiXTeX is a three-pass system (with a processor program that computes values for the element spacing in the music), and achieves finer control than is possible in the unmodified TeX-based mechanism that MusicTeX uses. Daniel Taupin and Andreas Egler are pursuing distinct versions of MusiXTeX; they are available, respectively, from macros/musixtex/taupin.tar.gz and macros/musixtex/egler.tar.gz
Digital music fans can typeset notation for their efforts by using midi2tex, which translates MIDI data files into MusicTeX source code. It is available from support/midi2tex.tar.gz
A rather simpler notation than MusicTeX is supported by abc2mtex;
this is a package designed to notate tunes stored in an ASCII format
(abc notation). It was designed primarily for folk and traditional
tunes of Western European origin (such as Irish, English and Scottish)
which can be written on one stave in standard classical notation.
However, it should be extendable to many other types of music. It is
available from support/abc2mtex.tar.gz
There is a mailing list for discussion of typesetting music in TeX.
To subscribe, send mail to mutex-request@stolaf.edu containing
the word `subscribe' in the body.
Michael Levine's macro package for drawing Feynman diagrams in LaTeX is available in macros/latex209/contrib/feynman.tar.gz
Another possibility is Thorsten Ohl's macros/latex/contrib/supported/feynmf.tar.gz, that works in combination with Metafont (or MetaPost). The feynmf or feynmp package reads a description of the diagram written in TeX, and writes out code. Metafont (or MetaPost) can then produce a font (or PostScript file) for use in a subsequent LaTeX run. For new users, who have access to MetaPost, the PostScript version is probably the better route, for document portability and other reasons.
It is not possible to make a proof environment which automatically
includes an `end-of-proof' symbol. Some proofs end in displayed maths;
others do not. If the input file contains ...\] \end{proof} then
LaTeX finishes off the displayed maths and gets ready for a new
line before it reads any instructions connected with ending the proof.
But traditionally the end-of-proof sign goes in the display, not on a
new line. So you just have to put it in by hand in every proof.
It is a good idea to have commands such as \R for the real numbers and
other standard number sets. Traditionally these were typeset in bold.
Because mathematicians usually do not have access to bold chalk, they
invented the special symbols that are now often used for \R, \C,
etc. These symbols are known as ``blackboard bold''. Before
insisting on using them, consider whether going back to the old system
of ordinary bold might not be acceptable (it is certainly simpler).
A set of blackboard bold capitals is available in the AMS fonts ``msam'' (e.g., ``msam10'' for 10pt) and ``msbm''. The fonts have a large number of mathematical symbols to supplement the ones in the standard TeX distribution. The fonts are available in fonts/ams/amsfonts/sources/symbols.tar.gz
Two files which load the fonts and define the symbols are provided, and both work with either TeX or LaTeX. Questions or suggestions regarding these fonts should be directed to tech-support@math.ams.org.
Another complete set of blackboard bold fonts, the bbold family, is available in Metafont (in fonts/bbold.tar.gz). This set has the interesting property of offering blackboard bold forms of lower-case letters, something rather rarely seen on actual blackboards.
The ``lazy person's'' blackboard bold macros:
\newcommand{\R}{{\sf R\hspace*{-0.9ex}%
\rule{0.15ex}{1.5ex}\hspace*{0.9ex}}}
\newcommand{\N}{{\sf N\hspace*{-1.0ex}%
\rule{0.15ex}{1.3ex}\hspace*{1.0ex}}}
\newcommand{\Q}{{\sf Q\hspace*{-1.1ex}%
\rule{0.15ex}{1.5ex}\hspace*{1.1ex}}}
\newcommand{\C}{{\sf C\hspace*{-0.9ex}%
\rule{0.15ex}{1.3ex}\hspace*{0.9ex}}}
work well at normal size if the surrounding text is cmr10. However,
they are not part of a proper maths font, and so do not work in sub- and
superscripts. Moreover, the size and position of the vertical bar is
affected by the font of the surrounding text.
If you want to take advantage of the powerful \newtheorem command
without the constraint that the contents of the theorem is in a sloped
font (for example, to use it to create remarks, examples, proofs,
...) then you can use the style file theorem.sty (part of
macros/latex/packages/tools.tar.gz). Alternatively, the following sets up an
environment remark whose content is in roman.
\newtheorem{preremark}{Remark}
\newenvironment{remark}%
{\begin{preremark}\rm}{\end{preremark}}
This will not work if you are using
NFSS outside of LaTeX2e,
because the command \rm behaves differently there.
If you want your top-level enumerates to be labelled `I/', `II/',
..., then give these commands:
\renewcommand{\theenumi}{\Roman{enumi}}
\renewcommand{\labelenumi}{\theenumi/}
The possible styles of numbering are given in Section 6.3 of Lamport's
book (see TeX-related books). If you are lazy and
just change \labelenumi in one go then your cross-references will be
wrong.
For lower level enumerates, replace enumi by enumii, enumiii
or enumiv, according to the level. If your label is much larger
than the default, you should also change \leftmargini,
\leftmarginii, etc.
If you're running LaTeX2e, the package enumerate.sty (part of
macros/latex/packages/tools.tar.gz) offers similar facilities. With
enumerate.sty, the example above would
be achieved simply by starting the enumeration
\begin{enumerate}[I/].
The easiest way to get headings of funny `sections' such as
prefaces in the table of contents is to use the
counter secnumdepth described in Appendix C of the LaTeX
manual. For example:
\setcounter{secnumdepth}{-1}
\chapter{Preface}
Of course, you have to set secnumdepth back to its usual value
(which is 2 in the standard styles) before you do
any `section' which you want to be numbered.
Similar settings are made automatically in the LaTeX book class by
the \frontmatter and \backmatter commands.
This is why it works.
\chapter without the star does
.toc file;
secnumdepth counter is greater than or equal to zero,
increase the counter for the chapter and write it out.
\footnote command doesn't work in tables; the table
traps the footnotes and they can't escape to the bottom of the page.
If your table is floating, your best bet is (unfortunately) to put the
table in a minipage environment and to put the notes
underneath the table, or to use Donald Arseneau's package
macros/latex209/contrib/misc/threeparttable.sty
Otherwise, if your table is not floating (it's just a
`tabular' in the middle of some text), there are several
things you can do to fix the problem.
\footnotemark to position the little marker
appropriately, and then put in \footnotetext commands to fill in
the text once you've closed the tabular environment. This is
described in Lamport's book, but it gets messy if there's more than
one footnote.
minipage anyway. This provides
all the ugliness of footnotes in a minipage with no extra effort.
tabular environment, but they
do allow footnotes.
Then put your tabular environment inside a savenotes
environment. Alternatively, say \makesavenoteenv{tabular} in
the preamble of your document, and tables will all handle footnotes
correctly.
This will handle footnotes properly, and has other facilities to increase the beauty of your tables. It may also cause other table-related packages (not the standard `tools' ones, though) to become very unhappy and stop working.
Suppose that the editor of your favourite journal has specified that section headings must be centred, in small capitals, and subsection headings ragged right in italic, but that you don't want to get involved in the sort of programming described in The LaTeX Companion (see TeX-related books; the programming itself is discussed under `@'). The following hack will probably satisfy your editor. Define yourself new commands
\newcommand{\ssection}[1]{%
\section[#1]{\centering\sc #1}}
\newcommand{\ssubsection}[1]{%
\subsection[#1]{\raggedright\it #1}}
and then use \ssection and \ssubsection in place of
\section and \subsection. This isn't perfect: section numbers
remain in bold, and starred forms need a separate redefinition. Also,
this will not work if you are using
NFSS outside of LaTeX2e,
because the font-changing commands behave differently there.
LaTeX implements a style that doesn't indent the first paragraph after a section heading. There are coherent reasons for this, but not everyone likes it. The package indentfirst.sty (part of macros/latex/packages/tools.tar.gz) suppresses the mechanism, so that the first paragraph is indented.
The \footnote command is fragile, so that simply placing the
command in \section's arguments isn't satisfactory. Using
\protect\footnote isn't a good idea either: the arguments of a
section command are used in the table of contents and (more
dangerously) potentially also in page headings. Unfortunately,
there's no mechanism to suppress the footnote in the heading while
allowing it in the table of contents, though having footnotes in the
table of contents is probably unsatisfactory anyway.
To suppress the footnote in headings and table of contents:
\section[title]{title\footnote{title footnote}}
\footnote automagically disappear in a moving argument.
Don't do it. Learn some LaTeX, produce some documents, and then ask again.
You can never change the margins of a document by software,
because they depend on the actual size of the paper. What you can change
are the distances from the apparent top and left edges of the paper,
and the width and height of the text. Changing the last two requires
more skill than you might expect. The height should bear a certain
relationship to \baselineskip. And the width should not be more
than 75 characters. Lamport's warning in his section on
`Customizing the Style' really must be taken seriously. One-inch
margins on A4 paper are fine for 10- or 12-pitch typewriters, but not
for 10pt type (or even 11pt or 12pt) because so many
characters per line will irritate the reader. However...
Perhaps the easiest way to get more out of a page in LaTeX is to
get macros/latex209/contrib/misc/fullpage.sty, which sets the margins of the page identical
to those of plain TeX, i.e., 1-inch margins at all four
sides of the
paper. It also contains an adjustment for A4 paper.
Somewhat more flexible is macros/latex/contrib/other/misc/vmargin.sty, which has a canned set of paper sizes (a superset of that provided in LaTeX2e), provision for custom paper, margin adjustments and provision for two-sided printing.
For details of LaTeX's page
parameters, see section C.5.3 of the
LaTeX manual (pp. 181-182).
The origin in DVI coordinates is one inch
from the top of the paper and one inch from the left side; positive
horizontal measurements extend
right across the page, and positive vertical measurements extend down
the page. Thus, for margins closer to the left and top edges of the
page than 1 inch, the corresponding parameters, i.e.,
\evensidemargin, \oddsidemargin, \topmargin, can be set to
negative values.
You cannot simply change the margins of part of a document within the
document by
modifying the parameters shown in Lamport's figure C.3. They
should only be changed in the preamble of the document, i.e., before
the \begin{document} statement. To adjust the margins within a
document we define an environment:
\newenvironment{changemargin}[2]{%
\begin{list}{}{%
\setlength{\topsep}{0pt}%
\setlength{\leftmargin}{#1}%
\setlength{\rightmargin}{#2}%
\setlength{\listparindent}{\parindent}%
\setlength{\itemindent}{\parindent}%
\setlength{\parsep}{\parskip}%
}%
\item[]}{\end{list}}
This environment takes two arguments, and will indent the left
and right margins by their values, respectively. Negative values
will cause the margins to be narrowed, so
\begin{changemargin}{-1cm}{-1cm} narrows the left and right margins
by 1cm.
Put the word in a box, and measure the width of the box. For example,
\newdimen\stringwidth
\setbox0=\hbox{hi}
\stringwidth=\wd0
Note that if the quantity in the \hbox is a phrase, the actual
measurement only approximates the width that the phrase will occupy in
running text, since the inter-word glue can be adjusted in paragraph
mode.
The same sort of thing is expressed in LaTeX by:
\newlength{\gnat}
\settowidth{\gnat}{\textbf{small}}
This sets the value of the length command \gnat to the width of ``small''
in bold-face text.
Rainer Schöpf's verbatim.sty provides a comment environment which
excludes everything between and .
This package is available as part of macros/latex/packages/tools.tar.gz
A more general environment for doing the job is Victor Eijkhout's comment.sty, which lets you define environments for inclusion or exclusion in a document, thus offering a primitive configuration structure. It is available from the CTAN sites in macros/latex209/contrib/misc/comment.sty
Use the \mathop command, as in:
\newcommand{\diag}{\mathop{\rm diag}}
Subscripts and superscripts on \diag will be placed exactly as they
are on \lim. If you want your subscripts and superscripts always
placed to the right, do:
\newcommand{\diag}{\mathop{\rm diag}\nolimits}
This works in LaTeX 2.09 and in LaTeX2e, but not under NFSS alone
(see problems with \rm, etc.).
However, the canonical method for doing this in LaTeX2e is to use
the the \DeclareMathOperator command of amsopn.sty (which is
part of the AMSLaTeX package: fonts/ams/amslatex.tar.gz).
(It should be noted that ``log-like'' was reportedly a joke on Lamport's part; it is of course clear what was meant.)
Knuth was making a particular point about the capabilities of TeX when he defined the logo. Unfortunately, many believe, he thereby opened floodgates to give the world logos such as AMSTeX, PiCTeX, BibTeX, and so on. Lamport invented LaTeX, and marketing input led to the current logo LaTeX2e.
The common people don't have to follow this stuff wherever it goes, but, for those who insist, a large collection of logos is defined in macros/eplain/texnames.sty; the Metafont logo can be set in fonts that LaTeX2e knows about (so that it scales with the surrounding text) using the package macros/latex/contrib/supported/mflogo.tar.gz
For those who don't wish to acquire the `proper' logos, the canonical
thing to do is to say AMS-TeX (AMS-TeX) for AMSTeX,
PicTeX (PicTeX) for PiCTeX, BibTeX (BibTeX) for
BibTeX, and so on.
You may have a version mismatch problem. TeX's hyphenation system changed
between version 2.9 and 3.0. If you are using (plain) TeX
version 3.0 or later, make sure your plain.tex file has a
version number which is at least 3.0. If you are using LaTeX 2.09 you
should consider upgrading to LaTeX2e; if for some reason you can't, the
last version of LaTeX 2.09, released on 25 March 1992, is available
(for the time being at least) from macros/latex209/distribs/latex/general.tar.gz and ought
to solve this problem.
If you're using LaTeX2e, the problem probably arises from your
hyphen.cfg file, which has to be created if you're using a
multi-lingual version.
For the curious, here's what happened:
before TeX 3.0 the hyphenation algorithm would not
break a word if the part before the break was not at least two
characters long, and the part after the break at least three
characters long. Starting with version 3.0 the parameters
\lefthyphenmin and \righthyphenmin control the length of these
fragments. These are set to 2 and 3, respectively, in the new
plain and lplain formats. They can be set to any value, of course,
but if \lefthyphenmin+\righthyphenmin is greater than 62, all
hyphenation is suppressed.
A further source of oddity can derive from the 1995 release of the DC fonts, which introduced an alternative hyphen character. The LaTeX2e configuration files in the font release specified use of the alternative hyphen, and this could produce odd effects with words containing an explicit hyphen. The font configuration files in the December 1995 release of LaTeX2e do not use the alternative hyphen character, thus removing this source of problems.
You may have found that TeX's famed automatic word-division does not produce the break-points recommended by your dictionary. This may be because TeX is set up for American English, whose rules for word division (as specified, for example, in Webster's Dictionary) are completely different from the British ones (as specified, for example, in the Oxford Dictionaries). This problem is being addressed by the UK TeX User community (see Baskerville, issue 4.4) but an entirely satisfactory solution will take time. An interim hyphenation file is available in language/english/ukhyph.tex
TeX's algorithm for hyphenation gives up when it encounters an
\accent command; there are good reasons for this, but it means
that quality typesetting in non-English languages can be difficult.
For TeX itself, avoiding this effect means using Cork-encoded fonts (the DC fonts) which contain accented letters as single glyphs. In the future, perhaps, Omega will provide a rather different solution.
People sometimes get messages saying `memory capacity exceeded'.
Most of the time this error can be fixed
without enlarging TeX. The most common causes are unmatched braces,
extra-long lines, and poorly-written macros. Extra-long lines are
often introduced when files are transferred incorrectly between
operating systems, and line-endings are not preserved properly (the
tell-tale sign of an extra-long line error is the complaint
that the `buf_size' has overflowed).
If you really need to extend your TeX's capacity, the proper method depends on your installation. In the purest form, you change the parameters in module 11 of the WEB source. In less pure forms, you might need to modify a change file, or perhaps change some environment variables; emTeX allows you to adjust the memory allocation criteria on the command line. Consult the documentation that came with your implementation.
Tables and figures have a tendency to surprise, by floating
away from where they were specified to appear. This is in fact
perfectly ordinary document design; any professional typesetting
package will float figures and tables to where they'll fit without
violating the certain typographic rules. Even if you use the
placement specifier h for `here', the figure or table will not be
printed `here' if doing so would break the rules; the rules themselves
are pretty simple, and are given on page 198, section C.9 of the
LaTeX manual. In the worst case, LaTeX's rules can cause the
floating items to pile up to the extent that you get an error message
saying ``Too many unprocessed floats''; this means that the limited
set of registers in which LaTeX stores floating items is full.
What follows is a simple checklist of things to do to solve these
problems (the checklist talks throughout about figures, but applies
equally well to tables).
tbp) is reasonable; you should never simply say `h',
for example, since that says ``if it can't go here, it can't go
anywhere'', and as a result all subsequent floats pile up behind it.
\clearpage command? If so, do: the backlog of floats is
cleared after a \clearpage. (Note that the \chapter
command implicitly executes \clearpage, so you can't float past
the end of a chapter.)
afterpage package (part of
macros/latex/packages/tools.tar.gz). Its documentation gives as an example the idea
of putting \clearpage after the current page (where it
will clear the backlog, but not cause an ugly gap in your text), but
also admits that the package is somewhat fragile (though it's improving).
\pagestyle{empty} on first page in LaTeXIf you use \pagestyle{empty}, but the first page is numbered anyway,
you are probably using the \maketitle command too. This is not a bug
but a feature! The standard LaTeX styles are written so that
initial pages (pages containing a \maketitle, \part, or
\chapter) have a different page style from the rest of the document;
Hence, the commands internally issue \thispagestyle{plain}. This is
usually not acceptable behaviour if the surrounding page style is
`empty'.
Possible workarounds include:
\thispagestyle{empty} immediately after the \maketitle
command, with no blank line between them.
\rm, \bf, etc.If commands such as \rm and \bf have suddenly stopped working in
LaTeX in the way that you expect, it is likely that your system
administrator has installed a version of LaTeX 2.09 with
NFSS.
Complain loudly; ask
your system administrator to replace this version with
LaTeX2e,
in which commands such as \rm and \bf work just as before if you
are using one of the standard classes-article, report and book
(among others). In the meantime, use the option
oldlfont.sty, which should have been installed at the same time
as NFSS.
\tenrmLaTeX 2.09 defined a large set of commands for access to the fonts
that it had built in to itself. For example, various flavours of
cmr could be found as \fivrm, \sixrm, \sevrm,
\egtrm, \ninrm, \tenrm, \elvrm, \twlrm,
\frtnrm, \svtnrm, \twtyrm and \twfvrm.
These commands were never documented, but certain packages
nevertheless used them to achieve effects they needed.
Since the commands weren't public, they weren't included in LaTeX2e; to use the unconverted LaTeX 2.09 packages under LaTeX2e, you need also to include the package rawfonts.sty (which is part of the LaTeX2e distribution).
If some symbols, such as \Box and \lhd, no longer appear to
exist, then your system administrator has probably upgraded your
version of LaTeX to either
NFSS or LaTeX2e.
In the former case, use
oldlfont.sty (see problems with \rm, etc.).
In the latter, use the package latexsym, which is part of the
LaTeX2e distribution, or the package amsfonts, if
it is available.
Sometimes, however many times you run LaTeX, the cross-references
are just wrong. Remember that
the \label command must come after the \caption command, or
be part of it. For example,
\begin{figure} \begin{figure}
\caption{A Figure} or \caption{A Figure%
\label{fig} \label{fig}}
\end{figure} \end{figure}
\@ and @ in macro namesA common source of problems in a LaTeX document is the diagnostic
about the appearance of the command \@, or about other commands
containing the character @. The most common complaint is ``You
can't use `\spacefactor' in vertical mode'', but others occur.
Such problems are usually caused by including a LaTeX2e class or
package file into a LaTeX document by some means other than
\documentclass or \usepackage. LaTeX defines internal
commands whose names contain the character @; this enables it to
avoid clashes between its internal names and names that we would
normally use in our documents. In order that these commands may work
at all, \documentclass and \usepackage play around with the
meaning of @. Solve this problem by using the correct command to
include the file.
But, you will say, ``The LaTeX Companion tells me to use
commands containing @!''
Indeed; for example, there's a lengthy section about
\@startsection and how to use it to control the appearance of
section titles. Page 15 of The Companion explains this; and
suggests that you make such changes in the document preamble, between
\makeatletter and \makeatother. So the definition of
\subsection on page 26 could be:
\makeatletter
\renewcommand{\subsection}{\@startsection
{subsection}% % name
...
{\normalfont\normalsize\itshape}}% style
\makeatother
msx and msy fonts?The msx and msy fonts were designed by the American Mathematical
Society in the very early days of TeX, for use in typesetting
papers for mathematical journals. They were designed using the `old'
Metafont, which wasn't portable and is no longer available; for a long
time they were only available in 300dpi versions which only
imperfectly matched modern printers. The AMS has now redesigned the
fonts, using the current version of Metafont, and the new versions are
called the msa and msb families; they are available from
fonts/ams/amsfonts/sources/symbols.tar.gz
Nevertheless, msx and msy continue to turn up to plague us. There
are, of course, still sites that haven't got around to upgrading; but,
even if everyone upgraded, there would still be the problem of old
documents that specify them.
If you have a .tex source that requests msx and msy, the best
technique is to edit it so that it requests msa and msb (you only
need to change the single letter in the font names).
If you have a DVI file that requests the fonts, there is a package of virtual fonts to map the old to the new series; it's available in fonts/vf-files/msx2msa.tar.gz
am fonts?One still occasionally comes across a request for the am
series of fonts. The initials stood for `Almost [Computer] Modern',
and they were the predecessors of the Computer Modern fonts that we
.
There's not a lot one can do with these
fonts; they are (as their name implies) almost (but not quite) the
same as the cm series; if you're faced with a document that requests
them, all you can reasonably do is to edit the document. The
appearance of DVI files that request them is sufficiently rare that
no-one has undertaken the mammoth task of creating a translation of
them by means of virtual fonts; however, most drivers let you have a
configuration file in which you can specify font substitutions. If you
specify that every am font should be replaced by its corresponding
cm font, the output should be almost correct.
The BibTeX diagnostic ``Warning-you've exceeded 1000, the
global-string-size, for entry foo'' is not one that you can hope
to avoid by altering the BibTeX style in a simple way - BibTeX
itself needs recompiling to increase its limit on string sizes (which is
often not practical, and is never desirable). You must therefore
address the problem by changing your bibliography database.
The problem usually arises from a very large abstract or annotation included in the database. The only way forward is to take the entry out of the database, so that you don't encounter BibTeX's limit, but you may need to retain the entry because it will be included in the typeset document. In such cases, put the body of the entry in a separate file:
@article{long.boring,
author = "Fred Verbose",
...
abstract = "{\input{abstracts/long.tex}}"
}
In this way, you arrange that all BibTeX has to deal with is the
file name, though it will tell TeX (when appropriate) to include
all the long text.
When TeX is laying out text, it doesn't work from word to word, or from line to line; the smallest complete unit it formats is the paragraph. The paragraph is laid down in a buffer, as it appears, and isn't touched further until the end-paragraph marker is processed. It's at this point that the paragraph parameters have effect; and it's because of this sequence that one often makes mistakes that lead to the paragraph parameters not doing what one would have hoped (or expected).
Consider the following sequence of LaTeX:
{\raggedright % declaration for ragged text
Here's text to be ranged left in our output,
but it's the only such paragraph, so we now
end the group.}
Here's more that needn't be ragged...
TeX will open a group, and set the ragged-setting parameters within
that group; it will then save a couple of sentences of text and
close the group (thus restoring the previous value of the
ragged-setting parameters). Then it encounters a blank line, which it
knows to treat as a \par token, so it typesets the two sentences;
but because the enclosing group has now been closed, the parameter
settings have been lost, and the paragraph will be typeset normally.
The solution is simple: close the paragraph inside the group, so that the setting parameters remain in place. An appropriate way of doing that is to replace the last three lines above with:
end the group.\par} Here's more that needn't be ragged...In this way, the paragraph is completed while the setting parameters are still in force within the enclosing group.
Another alternative is to define an environment that does the appropriate job for you. For the above example, LaTeX already defines an appropriate one:
\begin{flushleft}
Here's text to be ranged left...
\end{flushleft}
Sometimes LaTeX saves data it will reread later. These data are often the argument of some command; they are the so-called moving arguments. (`Moving' because data are moved around.) Places to look for are all arguments that may go into table of contents, list of figures, etc.; namely, data that are written to an auxiliary file and read in later. Other places are those data that might appear in head- or footlines. Section headers and figure captions are the most prominent examples; there's a complete list in Lamport's book (see TeX-related books).
What's going on really, behind the scenes? The commands in the moving
arguments are already expanded to their internal structure during the
process of saving. Sometimes this expansion results in invalid TeX
code when processed again. ``\protect\cmd'' tells LaTeX to save
\cmd as \cmd, without expansion.
What is a `fragile command'? It's a command that expands into illegal TeX code during the save process.
What is a `robust command'? It's a command that expands into legal TeX code during the save process.
No-one (of course) likes this situation; the LaTeX3 team have removed the need for protection of some things in the production of LaTeX2e, but the techniques available to them within current LaTeX mean that this is an expensive exercise. It remains a long-term aim of the team to remove all need for these things.
\verb work within...?The LaTeX verbatim commands work by changing category codes. Knuth
says of this sort of thing ``Some care is needed to get the timing
right...'', since once the category code has been assigned to a
character, it doesn't change. So \verb has to assume that it is
getting the first look at its parameter text; if it isn't, TeX has
already assigned category codes so that \verb doesn't have a
chance. For example:
\verb+\error+
will work (typesetting `\error'), but
\newcommand{\unbrace}[1]{#1}
\unbrace{\verb+\error+}
will not (it will attempt to execute \error).
This is why the LaTeX book insists that verbatim
commands must not appear in the argument of any other command; they
aren't just fragile, they're quite unusable in any command parameter,
regardless of
\protection.
TeX provides two primitive commands \uppercase and
\lowercase to change the case of text; they're not much used, but
are capable creating confusion.
The two commands do not expand the text that is their parameter -
the result of \uppercase{abc} is `ABC', but \uppercase{\abc}
is always `\abc', whatever the meaning of \abc. The commands
are simply interpreting a table of equivalences between upper- and
lowercase characters.
They have (for example) no mathematical sense, and
\uppercase{About $y=f(x)$}
will produce
ABOUT $Y=F(X)$which is probably not what is wanted.
In addition, \uppercase and \lowercase do not deal very well
with non-American characters, for example \uppercase{\ae} is the
same as \ae.
LaTeX provides commands \MakeUppercase and \MakeLowercase
which fixes the latter problem. These commands are used in the
standard classes to produce upper case running heads for chapters
and sections.
Unfortunately \MakeUppercase and \MakeLowercase do not solve
the other problems with \uppercase, so for example a section
title containing \begin{tabular} ... \end{tabular} will
produce a running head containing \begin{TABULAR}. The simplest
solution to this problem is using a user-defined command, for
example:
\newcommand{\mytable}{\begin{tabular}...
\end{tabular}}
\section{A section title \protect\mytable{}
with a table}
Note that \mytable has to be protected, otherwise it will be
expanded and made upper case.
# signs doubled in macros?The way to think of this is that ## gets replaced by # in just the
same way that #1 gets replaced by `whatever is the first argument'.
So if you define a macro and use it as:
\def\a#1{...#1...#1...#1...} \a{b}
the macro expansion produces `...b...b...b...',
which people find normal. However, if we now fill in the `...':
\def\a#1{---#1---\def\x #1{xxx#1}}
\a{b} will expand to `-{}-{}-b-{}-{}-\def\x b{xxxb}'. This
defines \x to be a macro delimited by b, and taking no
arguments, which people may find strange, even though it is just a
specialisation of the example above. If you want \a to
define \x to be a macro with one argument, you need to write:
\def\a#1{---#1---\def\x ##1{xxx##1}}
and \a{b} will expand to
`-{}-{}-b-{}-{}-\def\x #1{xxx#1}', because #1 gets replaced by `b'
and ## gets replaced by #.
To nest a definition inside a definition inside a definition then
you need ####1, as at each stage ## is replaced by
#. At the next level you need 8 #s each time, and so on.
NFSS was an extension to LaTeX written by Frank Mittelbach and Rainer Schöpf. It is described in TUGboat 10(2). In traditional typesetting, fonts are described by four parameters: the family (e.g., computer modern), the series (i.e., the weight and width of the font, such as light or bold), the shape (e.g., italic), and the size. NFSS is a mechanism allowing the user to change any of these independently. NFSS makes it relatively easy to use nonstandard fonts such as the PostScript ones with LaTeX, and easy to change maths fonts. It also allows dynamic loading of fonts at runtime (i.e., not when the format file is created).
With the demise of LaTeX 2.09 as supported software, the label `NFSS' has become somewhat misleading, as there's no `old' scheme with which to contrast it - LaTeX has incorporated the NFSS.
LaTeX2e is a new version of the LaTeX package, prepared and supported by the LaTeX3 project team. It moved out of its test phase in June 1994, and is now the standard LaTeX; LaTeX 2.09 is no longer supported. New versions are released at (approximately) 6-monthly intervals; this does not mean the functionality is unstable, merely that the implementation is steadily being refined.
LaTeX2e is upwardly compatible with LaTeX 2.09, but has new features. In the latest (December 1995) release, these include:
\caption without being protected.
\newcommand can define commands with one optional argument;
such commands are automatically robust.
The LaTeX3 project team is a small group of volunteers whose aim is to produce a major new document processing system based on the principles pioneered by Leslie Lamport in the current LaTeX. It will remain freely available and it will be fully documented at all levels.
The LaTeX3 team has already delivered its first product, LaTeX2e, a macro package based on Lamport's original code, but modified to be more readily supportable than was Lamport's.
Omega
is a program built on top of TeX which works internally with 16-bit
characters (Unicode); this allows it to work with most scripts in the
world without any complications of coding schemes. Omega also has a
powerful concept of input and output filters to allow the user to work
with existing transliteration schemes, etc. Omega is an
ongoing project by John Plaice (plaice@ift.ulaval.ca) and
Yannis Haralambous (\EmaildotYannis.Haralambous@univ-lille1.fr). An
email discussion list is available: subscribe by sending a message
`subscribe omega <your name>' to listserv@ens.fr
The NTS project first saw the light of day at the Hamburg meeting of DANTE during 1992, as a response to an aspiration to produce something even better than TeX. The project is not simply enhancing TeX, for two reasons: first, that TeX itself has been frozen by Knuth (see the future of TeX), and second, even if they were allowed to develop the program, some members of the NTS team feel that TeX in its present form is simply unsuited to further development. While all those involved in the project are involved with, and committed to, TeX, they recognise that the end product may very well have little in common with TeX other than its philosophy.
Initially, and despite the reservations expressed at the inaugural meeting, the group is concentrating on extending TeX per se: members are implementing extensions and enhancements to TeX through the standard medium of a change-file. These extensions and enhancements, together with TeX proper, will form a system called eTeX, which will be 100\ compatible with TeX; furthermore, it will be possible during format creation to construct a format that is TeX: no extensions or enhancements will be present.
The final aim of the project will be to produce an entirely new typesetting system, building on the experience gained in the earlier phases. This system is intended to provide a stable basis for typesetting in the future, in the way that TeX has since it was first offered to the world.
For a start, make entirely sure you have found a bug. Double-check with books about TeX, LaTeX, or whatever you're using; compare what you're seeing against the other answers above; ask every possible person you know who has any TeX-related expertise. The reasons for all this caution are various.
If you've found a bug in TeX itself, you're a rare animal indeed. Don Knuth is so sure of the quality of his code that he offers real money prizes to finders of bugs; the cheques he writes are such rare items that they are seldom cashed. If you think you have found a genuine fault in TeX itself (or Metafont, or the CM fonts, or the TeXbook), don't immediately write to Knuth, however. He only looks at bugs once or twice a year, and even then only after they are agreed as bugs by a small vetting team. In the first instance, contact Barbara Beeton at the AMS (bnb@math.ams.org), or contact TUG.
If you've found a bug in LaTeX2e, look in the bugs database to see if it's already been reported. If not you should submit details of the bug to the LaTeX3 team. To do this, you should process the file latexbug.tex with LaTeX (the file is part of the LaTeX2e distribution. The process will give you instructions about what to do with your bug report (it can, for example, be sent to the team by email). Please be sparing of the team's time; they're doing work for the good of the whole LaTeX community, and any time they spend tracking down non-bugs is time not available to write or debug new code. Details of the whole process, and an interface to the database, are available via http://www.tex.ac.uk/ctan/latex/bugs.html
If you've found a bug in LaTeX2.09, or some other such unsupported software, there's not a lot you can do about it. You may find help or de facto support on a newsgroup such as comp.tex.tex or on a mailing list such as texhax@tex.ac.uk, but posting non-bugs to any of these forums can lay you open to ridicule! Otherwise you need to go out and find yourself a willing TeX-consultant.
The TeX FAQ is brought to you by the UK TeX Users Group (UKTuG-Enquiries@tex.ac.uk)