TeX Frequently Asked Questions

Brought to you by the UK TeX Users Group

Index

• Introduction
• The Background
  • What is TeX?
  • How should I pronounce ``TeX''?
  • What is METAFONT?
  • What is MetaPost?
  • How can I be sure it's really TeX?
  • Are TeX and friends Y2K compliant?
  • What is LaTeX?
  • How should I pronounce ``LaTeX(2e)''?
  • Should I use plain TeX or LaTeX?
  • What are the AMS packages (AMS-TeX, etc.)?
  • What is Eplain?
  • What is Lollipop?
  • What is Texinfo?
  • If TeX is so good, how come it's free?
  • What is the future of TeX?
  • What are TUG and TUGboat?
  • Are there nationally-based user groups, too?
  • TUG Technical Working Groups
• Documentation and Help
  • Books on TeX and its relations
  • Where to find this article
  • Mailing lists about TeX and its friends
  • BibTeX Documentation
  • The PicTeX manual
  • Finding (La)TeX macro packages
  • Finding files in the CTAN archives
• Bits and pieces of TeX
  • What is a DVI file?
  • What is a driver?
  • What are PK files?
  • What are TFM files?
  • Virtual fonts
  • \special commands
  • Documented LaTeX sources (.dtx files)
  • What are the EC fonts?
• Acquiring the Software
  • Repositories of TeX material
  • Contributing a file to the archives
  • Finding new fonts
  • TeX CD-ROMs
• TeX Systems
  • (La)TeX for different machines
  • TeX-friendly editors and shells
  • Commercial TeX implementations
• DVI Drivers and Previewers
  • DVI to PostScript conversion programs
  • DVI drivers for HP LaserJet
  • DVI previewers
• Support Packages for TeX
  • Fig, a TeX-friendly drawing package
  • TeXCAD, a drawing package for LaTeX
  • Spelling checkers for work with TeX
  • The VorTeX package
• Literate programming
  • What is Literate Programming?
  • WEB for C, FORTRAN, and other languages
• Format conversions
  • Conversion between (La)TeX and others
  • Conversion from (La)TeX to plain ASCII
  • Conversion from SGML or HTML to TeX
  • (La)TeX conversion to HTML
  • Making hypertext documents from TeX
  • Making Acrobat documents from LaTeX
• METAFONT
  • Getting METAFONT to do what you want
  • Which font files should be kept
  • Getting bitmaps from the archives
• PostScript and TeX
  • Using PostScript fonts with TeX
  • Previewing files using PostScript fonts
  • TeX font metric files for PostScript fonts
  • Problems using PostScript fonts
  • Choice of scalable outline fonts
  • Including a PostScript figure in LaTeX
• Special sorts of typesetting
  • Drawing with TeX
  • Double-spaced documents in LaTeX
  • Formatting a thesis in LaTeX
  • Flowing text around figures in LaTeX
  • Alternative head- and footlines in LaTeX
  • Including a file in verbatim in LaTeX
  • Including line numbers in typeset output
  • Generating an index in (La)TeX
  • Typesetting URLs
  • Citing URLs with BibTeX
  • Using BibTeX with plain TeX
  • Typesetting music in TeX
  • Drawing Feynman diagrams in LaTeX
• How do I do X in TeX or LaTeX
  • Proof environment
  • Symbols for the number sets
  • Roman theorems
  • Fancy enumeration lists
  • Unnumbered sections in the Table of Contents
  • Footnotes in tables
  • Style of section headings
  • Indent after section headings
  • Footnotes in LaTeX section headings
  • Changing the margins in LaTeX
  • Finding the width of a letter, word, or phrase
  • Excluding blocks of text from the DVI file
  • Setting bold Greek letters in LaTeX
  • Defining a new log-like function in LaTeX
  • Typesetting all those TeX-related logos
• Things are Going Wrong...
  • Weird hyphenation of words
  • (Merely) peculiar hyphenation
  • Accented words aren't hyphenated
  • Enlarging TeX
  • Moving tables and figures in LaTeX
  • \pagestyle{empty} on first page in LaTeX
  • Underlined text won't break
  • Odd behaviour of \rm, \bf, etc.
  • Old LaTeX font references such as \tenrm
  • Missing symbols
  • LaTeX gets cross-references wrong
  • \@ and @ in macro names
  • Where are the msx and msy fonts?
  • Where are the am fonts?
  • `String too long' in BibTeX
• Why does it do that?
  • What's going on in my \include commands?
  • Why does it ignore paragraph parameters?
  • What's the reason for `protection'?
  • Why doesn't \verb work within...?
  • Case-changing oddities
  • Why are # signs doubled in macros?
  • Why does LaTeX split footnotes across pages?
• Recent Developments
  • The New Font Selection Scheme (NFSS)
  • LaTeX2e (the `new' standard LaTeX)
  • The LaTeX3 project
  • The Omega project
  • The NTS project
  • The PDFTeX project
• Perhaps There isn't an Answer
  • What to do if you find a bug