Welcome to the UK List of
TeX Frequently Asked Questions

Introduction

This FAQ was originated by the Committee of the UK TeX Users' Group (UK TUG) as a development of a regular posting to the Usenet newsgroup comp.text.tex that was maintained for some time by Bobby Bodenheimer. The first UK version was much re-arranged and corrected from the original, and little of Bodenheimer's work now remains.

An alternative HTML version of the FAQ may be found in TeX Live.

A copy of the complete FAQ, in PDF with many hyperlinks, may be found on help/uk-tex-faq/newfaq.pdf (formatted for A4 paper) or help/uk-tex-faq/letterfaq.pdf (formatted for North American "letter" paper).

Most members of the committee of UK TUG, over the years since 1994, have contributed to this FAQ to some extent. The following people, who have never been members of the committee, have also contributed help or advice: Donald Arseneau, Barbara Beeton, Karl Berry, Giuseppe Bilotta, Charles Cameron, Damian Cugley, Michael Dewey, Michael Downes, Thomas Esser, Anthony Goreham, Norman Gray, Eitan Gurari, William Hammond, Hartmut Henkel, John Hobby, Morten Høgholm, Berthold Horn, Ian Hutchinson, Werner Icking, Regnor Jernsletten, David Kastrup, Isaac Khabaza, Ulrich Klauer, Markus Kohm, Simon Law, Daniel Luecking, Sanjoy Mahajan, Andreas Matthias, Brooks Moses, Ted Nieland, Hans Nordhaug, Pat Rau, Heiko Oberdiek, Piet van Oostrum, Scott Pakin, Oren Patashnik, José Carlos Santos, Walter Schmidt, Hans-Peter Schröcker, Joachim Schrod, Maarten Sneep, James Szinger, Ulrik Vieth, Mike Vulis, Peter Wilson, Rick Zaccone and Reinhard Zierke.

Caveat: Acquiring files

Most answers in this FAQ provide links for downloading software; a large proportion of these links direct you to entire directories on the CTAN archives. Unfortunately, some browsers issue a sequence of commands that causes CTAN servers to deny the existence of compressed archive files of the directory. The FAQ now therefore offers three possible links for downloading directories (that aren't already designated "browse only"): the links give you .tar.gz and .zip archives, and (for those with the troublesome browsers) a link for browsing the directory.

The Background

Documentation and Help

Bits and pieces of TeX

Acquiring the Software

TeX Systems

DVI Drivers and Previewers

Support Packages for TeX

Literate programming

Format conversions

Installing (La)TeX files

Fonts

Metafont fonts

Adobe Type 1 ("PostScript") fonts

Particular font families

Hypertext and PDF

Graphics

Bibliographies and citations

Creating bibliographies

Creating citations

Manipulating whole bibliographies

Adjusting the typesetting

Alternative document classes

Document structure

Page layout

Spacing of characters and lines

Typesetting specialities

Tables of contents and indexes

Labels and references

How do I do...?

Mathematics

Lists

Tables, figures and diagrams

Floating tables, figures, etc.

Footnotes

Document management

Hyphenation

Odds and ends

Symbols, etc.

Macro programming

"Generic" macros and techniques

LaTeX macros

Things are Going Wrong...

Getting things to fit

Making things stay where you want them

Things have "gone away"

Why does it do that?

Common errors

Common misunderstandings

Why shouldn't I?

The joy of TeX errors

Current TeX-related projects

You're still stuck?


Maintenance of the TeX FAQ is coordinated by Robin Fairbairns.

Comments, suggestions, or error reports? -- see "Improving the FAQ" or "Extending the FAQ".

This is FAQ version 3.13a, last modified on 2005/01/04.