TeX (generally)

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Revision as of 13:36, 23 March 2011 by Vojta (talk | contribs) (Transition to TeX Live 2010: update for imminent switchover)
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TeX (generally)

We are currently using the 2007 TeX Live distribution of TeX and related files. Soon we will transition to the 2010 version of TeX live—see the section below.

You can browse local documentation on TeX Live and its packages by going to /~vojta/tex-doc . Files of particular interest to beginners include:

You can also see our old TeX help instead, but be warned that many of these documents refer to LaTeX 2.09 instead of LaTeX 2e, which is installed here and which has been the "modern" version of LaTeX since 1993.

More good starting points for TeX and LaTeX information:

Some WikiBooks are also available for TeX:

Transition to TeX Live 2010

We will soon switch to using the 2010 version of TeX Live. This version incorporates:

  • fuller support for Unicode characters,
  • preliminary support for the STIX font set developed by the AMS in collaboration with other major publishers,
  • a newer version of LuaTeX (which combines a scripting language with TeX),
  • numerous other updates to the standard programs.

The switchover may take place any day now. To check which version of TeX is currently in use, type the command

kpsewhich null.tex

and look for the strings "2007" or "2010".

You can try out the new TeX right now, by typing the following line, once per terminal window:

set path = (/local/depot/4/texlive-2010/bin $path)

If you are using a thin client (or using the thin client server), then this should be changed to:

set path = (/local/depot/texlive-2010/bin $path)

(The above lines assume that you have not changed which shell program you use when logging in.)

Solaris machines will not be able to run TeX Live 2010, because support for Solaris is being phased out.

Please send any questions or concerns to Paul Vojta.

If the switchover to 2010 has taken place already and you are having problems with it, you can go back to the old version of TeX by typing the command

set path = (/local/depot/4/texlive-2007/bin $path)

If you are using a thin client (or using the thin client server), then type the following instead:

set path = (/local/depot/texlive-2007/bin $path)

If this is the case, though be sure to report the problem, since problems cannot be fixed if we don't know about them.

Links

Links to special topics on TeX include:

Some Samples

Some TeX samples are available:

latex Writing a thesis in LaTeX (same as the above link)
tex and amstex latex A sample MetaPost document, with a label
tex amstex latex Using Ralph Smith's Formal Script (rsfs) fonts for nicer script characters
amstex latex Using Cyrillic text
amstex latex Using Cyrillic symbols
latex Using Romanian characters
amstex latex Bold Greek letters