Welcome to the (La)TeX page! Here you will find information about the TeX setup at the Computer Science Department at Brown University, available commands and how to use them, (La)TeX primers and package documentation, and pointers to other useful TeX-related sites on the Web.
Warning: These pages contain no (La)TeX source or distribution packages, only documentation. If you are running (La)TeX on non-departmental machines note that some of the information may not be applicable to your installation.
Our TeX Setup
The currently installed version of TeX is 3.14159 as provided by the Web2C-7.4.5 distribution. The supported version of LaTeX is the 2001 version of LaTeX2e (LaTeX2e is the recommended version of LaTeX, and the older version LaTeX 2.09 is obsolete). Public files are organized in a tree structure that obeys the TDS standard. Our TDS tree is rooted at /usr/share/texmf.
If you have LaTeX input files of your own, you should define the TEXINPUTS environment variable in your startups. This variable contains a colon-separated list of directories with inputs for latex2e. You do not need to include the system directories on this list, just your own directories (the initial colon provides that the system directories are included). In csh you would need something like this:
setenv TEXINPUTS :.:<your latex2e directory 1>:<your latex2e directory 2>...
Collaborative LaTex Editing
The department is working with the library to pilot a test of ShareLaTex (https://www.sharelatex.com/), an online, collaborative LaTex editor. If you are interested in having access to the system, please email problem@cs.brown.edu and provide your @brown.edu email address.
TeX-related Commands
- tex - plain TeX
- latex - Same as latex2e, see below
- xdvi - DVI previewer for X
(The online documentation for xdvi only available as a unix "man" page and is not provided in the teTEX documentation. Use man xdvi to read it.) - dvips - convert a DVI file to Postscript
- makeindex - a general purpose, formatter-independent index processor
- bibtex - make a bibliography for LaTeX (see also bibtex)
- texinfo - a macro package for TeX used by the GNU system for producing printed manuals
- tib -another way to create bibliographies for (La)TeX
(available on our Solaris machines, please see the "man" page for documentation) - mf - the metafont program for generating fonts
- mp - the metapost program for generating Postscript figures
- latex2html - convert LaTeX files to HTML
- xfig - X11 drawing program; can generate LaTeX figures in a variety of formats
- lgrind - produce nice program listings using LaTeX
Local FAQ
Questions that we find ourselves answering often are here.
Primers
The canonical documentation for (La)TeX may be found in these books:
- The TeXbook, by Donald Knuth
- The original book describing the guts of the system, written by the guy who wrote TeX in the first place.
- LaTeX: A Document Preparation System, by Leslie Lamport, Addison-Wesley, 2nd ed, 1994.
- Leslie Lamport originally wrote LaTeX; this book is the book to buy to learn LaTeX. The second edition documents LaTeX2e.
- The LaTeX Companion, by Goossens, Mittelbach and Samarin, Addison-Wesley, 1994.
- Written by members of the LaTeX3 project, it describes further how to use LaTeX2e and documents additional classes/packages.
- A Guide to LaTeX, by Kopka and Daly, Addison-Wesley, 1999.
- This book is a more recent one and offers considerably more information than the earlier books.
Useful on-line primers include:
- The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX2e
- A longer (87 pages) more in-depth introduction to LaTeX2e. Also a good starting point.
- LaTeX Command Reference Manual
- Describes all LaTeX2e commands. Don't expect to learn LaTeX from this.
- Symbols in LaTeX
- A six page list of available mathematical symbols.
- A LaTeX Surivical Guide for Unix Systems
- This document describes how to run LaTeX and utilities on a Unix system.
- Including Graphics in LaTeX2e Documents
- Everything you ever wanted to know about using Postscript graphics in LaTeX documents.
- Packages in the graphics bundle
- This provides a documentation on the recommended LaTeX2e graphics package, which includes information on how to use colours in the output.
- HTML documentation of many LaTeX topics at NASA.
Documentation
- LaTeX2e User's Guide, class and package author's guide and font guide.
- LaTeX2e packages
- AMSLaTeX and the AMS fonts
- Babel
- Packages in the graphics bundle
- The PSfrag system (PSfrag system allows you to import PostScript figures from any other package, but use LaTeX's power for all of the mathematical and textual annotations. (Note that xfig allows you to do this anyway).)
- Creating graphics with MetaPost
- Creating graphics with PSTricks part1, part2, part3, part4
- XY-pic user guide and reference manual
- Using BibTeX and writing BibTeX styles
- Creating custom BibTeX styles with makebst
- Creating indices with makeindex
- Pretty-printing with lgrind
- Brown PhD thesis class file
- Brown Honors thesis class file
- Brown letterhead (class file, logo, example letter)
- Brown PhD and Honors thesis class files are available on the CS Dept intranet only
Other TeX-related Resources on the Web
Credit where it's due: These pages were originally created and maintained by Dimitris Michailidis and Manos Renieris.
