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TeX LaTeX, pdfTeX, and others

Latest Installed Version : 1.0.6

 

TeX is a document processing system written by Donald Kunth. LaTeX is a set of TeX macros that provide structure based formatting commands. TeX/LaTeX are used extensively in science and engineering for producing technical papers and documents.

Notre Dame uses the teTeX distribution of TeX/LaTeX programs. This distribution features a very complete collection of macros, style files, and support programs.

Invoking

TeX and friends are is part of the tex module.

  • The command tex will process a document with the TeX formatter to produce a dvi file.
  • The command latex will process a document with the LaTeX 2e package to produce a dvi file.
  • The pdftex and pdflatex commands work as above, but produce Adobe's portable document format (PDF) as output. PDF can be viewed by Acrobat and other programs.
  • The dvi file may be viewed on-screen using the xdvi command.
  • The dvi can be printed to a postscript printer using dvips. The flag -P ps-type1 will cause dvips to use postscript type1 fonts instead of the default bitmaps (useful if you will be translating to PDF).
  • Users can place macro files, fonts, style files, and the like in a subdirectory named texmf in their AFS home directory. This directory will be searched automatically by tex and friends.
  • Solaris users can access this distribution of TeX on that platform by running these commands. [This install of TeX is several years newer than the default one on Suns at ND and has additional macros and programs not available in the Sun install of TeX.]
Getting Help

Help is available at the following locations:

  • Many of the TeX-related programs have manual pages.
  • On-line manuals for many programs in the ND TeX installation are available. (only on ND unix workstations)
  • The OIT help desk distributes the documents
    • U2230 A Gentle Introduction to TeX
    • U2232 Using LATeX
  • Documentation for the ND Thesis Latex class is available online on the author's webpage as well as in Adobe PDF and TeX dvi lormats. (only available on ND unix workstations)
  • Dale highly recommends the following books:
    • "LaTeX, A Document Preparation System", Lamport; ISBN 0-201-52983-1.
    • "The LaTeX Companion", Goossens, et. al.; ISBN 0-201-54199-8.
    • "The TeXbook", Knuth; ISBN 0-201-13447-0.
Installation

TeX and friends are available from Notre Dame AFS space. This module is loaded by default.