LaTeX installation TeX expert information 1 June 1997 SUMMARY ======= This document contains information about the LaTeX installation for TeX experts. In particular it describes: * The checks performed by ltxcheck.tex * How to print the LaTeX source. For more general information, see install.txt. For information on configuring LaTeX see cfgguide.tex. THE LTXCHECK.TEX CHECKS ======================= Here is a description of the checks run by ltxcheck. 1) The \@currdir check. It is useful for LaTeX to know the syntax for the `current directory (or folder)', or `default directory', if the operating system has such a concept. For example, file abc.tex in this directory, or folder, is specified by: ./abc.tex on Unix and most DOS/OS2 TeX's, []abc.tex on VMS :abc.tex on a Macintosh. The above possibilities will be found automatically during the installation. However, if none of these syntaxes works on your system then the internal macro \@currdir will be set to be empty and ltxcheck will report this. If your system does have a notion of a current directory, you can define \@currdir in the file texsys.cfg. You could also report this to the latex-bug address, so that later releases can automatically cope with your system. 2) The file name parser check. \filename@parse may be defined in texsys.cfg if the default installation does not define a suitable parser. (In fact no widely used TeX system should need such a re-definition as the standard installation should correctly define this command for unix, dos, atari, VMS, and Macintosh, at least.) Because of differences in directory syntax, most features of this command can not be checked in a portable way, however ltxcheck does check that at least {article.cls} is correctly parsed as base name article and extension cls. 3) The \input@path check. On some systems TeX cannot check whether a file exists before trying to input it, unless the filename is expressed as a full path name, including the directory. On these systems LaTeX needs to be given a list of directories in which to look for files; the internal macro \input@path holds this information. When run, ltxcheck will try to locate the file article.cls. If it fails to find this file (and you have placed it in the `standard input directory') then you must define \input@path in the file texsys.cfg. The files texsys.cfg and ltdirchk.dtx contain examples of how to do this but only you know the directories and syntax that should be used for your installation. We hope to build up a better collection of examples in future releases of LaTeX, as it is tested on more TeX systems. 4) TeX version check. The next check tests that you are running a recent version of TeX. If ltxcheck reports that you have TeX2, then you should try to upgrade TeX (and rebuild LaTeX) as soon as possible. LaTeX may be used with TeX2, but certain features will be missing and you will not be able to use the new (8-bit) font families that are now available. If you must stick with TeX2, please read the extra information in the file tex2.txt. If ltxcheck reports that your TeX version is older than 3.141, you will see some strange messages during the installation. This is because earlier versions of TeX printed certain line-breaks in messages on the terminal as `^^J' rather than starting a new line. LaTeX will work round this bug and thus avoid `^^J' appearing in error messages, but you should upgrade your TeX as soon as possible, as other bugs have been fixed, not just line breaks in messages. At the present time (2005) the current TeX version is 3.141592. 5) Fonts check. Finally ltxcheck.tex tests to see if it can find a `representative sample' of the fonts used by LaTeX. Fonts that may cause problems are: a) The circle fonts. These were renamed some years ago from circle* to lcircle*, although some sites still have them under the old name. Also the names are longer than 8 letters which may cause some problems. b) The `extra Computer Modern' fonts. The American Mathematical Society has extended the range of sizes available in the Computer Modern fonts. LaTeX now assumes that these extra cm fonts are available. The fonts are available from a CTAN archive, in the directory tex-archive/macros/latex/fonts or alternatively as part of the AMS fonts collection, which also includes many useful mathematical fonts. c) The `T1 encoded Computer Modern' fonts. This is the ec or dc font collection. The new (1995) release 1.2 of the dc fonts changed most of the file names. For this reason the fd files such as t1cmr.fd cannot be written to work with the dc fonts of different releases. LaTeX by default unpacks the fd files for the ec dc fonts. If you have an older release of the dc fonts and do not wish to upgrade then you should unpack the necessary fd files by running LaTeX on the file olddc.ins (dc older than version 1.2) or newdc.ins (version 1.2 and 1.3). As the T1 fd files will have been used when making the format, you must re-run initex latex.ltx to remake the format if you update the fd files in this way. Running ltxcheck will produce a ! BAD LaTeX2e system!! error message if it detects that the `new' fd files are loaded into the format, but only the old dc fonts are available, and vice versa. If the old fonts are detected, and the `old' fd files are loaded then no error is generated, but a message suggesting that you upgrade is produced. The ec fonts are available from a CTAN archive, in the directory tex-archive/fonts/ec . 6) Files check. Finally ltxcheck checks that the main TeX input files that LaTeX will use when running documents (such as the article class file, fd files, and main packages such as fontenc) are all available. DOCUMENTATION OF THE CODE ========================= Most of the documentation is nowadays available as precomplied PDF files. This section describes how to produce typeset code documentation yourself from the source. To typeset a documented code file (a .dtx file) you simply run LaTeX on it. The file source2e.tex is a master file which produces the documented code for the whole LaTeX kernel (but not the standard packages, classes, or compatibility mode). You need to have LaTeX2e installed before doing this. To configure the appearance of this documentation, you can use a ltxdoc.cfg file. For example, putting the following line into this file will format the documentation for A4 paper: \PassOptionsToClass{a4paper}{article} The doc package, which is used by the documentation files, writes index files and change-history files that can be processed by the program MakeIndex. If this program is part of your TeX installation, you can get an index and history listing for a documentation file by running the .idx and .glo files through this program. For example, in Unix MakeIndex, you should say: makeindex -s gind.ist FILENAME makeindex -s gglo.ist -o FILENAME.gls FILENAME.glo source2e.tex needs a special source2e.ist file (in place of gind.ist). Running makeindex will produce some warning messages about ignored style specifiers; these can be safely ignored. See the comments at the end of source2e.tex for more information. CONFIGURING LaTeX ================= In addition to the system-dependent customisation in texsys.cfg, various other parts of LaTeX can be configured to suit local needs. Further details can be found in the document cfgguide.tex. We recommend that you install the standard system before attempting any further customisation. If you are thinking of making other changes to LaTeX, please read the document modguide.tex as it describes the precautions you need to take when making modifications in order to ensure that standard LaTeX remains a stable, maintainable system. FURTHER INFORMATION =================== You will find further information about various aspects of LaTeX in the distributed files with names <*>guide.tex. You will need to install the new version before you can typeset these files. --- Copyright 1995-2006 the LaTeX3 project. All rights reserved ---