All freely available TeX and LaTeX files can be found online in
standardised file hierarchies that are part of the Comprehensive
TeX Archive Network (CTAN).
All CTAN sites contain all files
necessary to set up LaTeX on any system for which it is
freely available.
There are three "backbone" CTAN sites, and many mirrors.
Some useful starting points are:
CTAN on DAnTE e. V., the
German TeX user group's site, in German. An English language version
of the pages is also available.
An Irish site, which
will find the CTAN site closest to you.
If you are looking for a particular LaTeX "package" (see below), you
may wish to consult the
TeX
online catalogue, which can help you search the CTAN
sites for a particular package.
Normally, LaTeX is run under Windows NT at the OECD/NEA in the TDB
project, but LaTeX also runs perfectly fine under Unix (in fact, the
Unix version existed for quite some time before a really good
freeware port was available for Windows) and several other systems
(such as VMS). We will deal only with Unix and Windows 95/98/NT
("Win32" in the following text) here, and will do so separately for
each system.
After installing LaTeX on your machine, you can install all the
extra LaTeX packages necessary by doing the following.
For modern LaTeX packages, get all the relevant files in the
relevant subdirectory on your CTAN. At a minimum, you should get two
files with extensions ".dtx" and ".ins". Then, to install, for
e. g. the package tdb, you
do
latex tdb.ins
This will, at a minimum, produce a file with the extension ".sty"
(in this case, tdb.sty) that must then be moved to a directory where
LaTeX can find it (usually G:\texmf\tex\latex\inputs).
For old LaTeX packages, you simply move all the relevant files
(usually all the .sty files) to a directory where your LaTeX
installation can find them.
To get the documentation for a modern (.dtx) package, either check
out any separate doc files that come with the package, or, at the
DOS (or Unix) prompt, run latex on the .dtx file, e. g.
latex tdb.dtx
This will produce a DVI file which you can view with your favourite
DVI viewer (e. g. YAP for MikTeX), or make a PostScript file from
with dvips (e. g. "dvips -o tdb.ps tdb" at the DOS or Unix prompt)
and print.
babel; for "foreign" language type-setting, defined as anything
besides American English. The TDB project uses British
English, and hence uses the special hyphenation file for british
English which can be found at CTAN sites, and
uses the babel option "british", giving the following in the
preamble of the LaTeX document:
\usepackage[british]{babel}
ifthen; for advanced logical constructs;
graphicx; for handling included EPS (Encapsulated PostScript)
files for figures;
lastpage; this package gives the possibility of referring to the
total number of pages in a document; this is only used by
tdbdoc;
fancyheadings; for headers with chapter and section names, page
numbers etc. NB: The TDB project uses an old version of this package,
which is incompatible with the latest versions available.
array; for better table formatting;
multirow; for table columns covering multiple rows in a table;
float; for better control over the placement of "floats" (tables
and figures);
longtable; for multiple-page tables;
dcolumn; for centering columns around a particular character
(e. g., a decimal point);
threeparttable; for adding footnotes to tables;
lscape; for printing individual pages in landscape format;
times; for typesetting running text in Adobe Times (New) Roman
font.
mathtime; for using the MathTime font for typesetting chemical
and mathematical formulae.
hyperrefb; a modified version of hyperref; used when making LaTeX
output for creating PDF files.
backref; loaded automatically when using hyperrefb, but must be
loaded separately otherwise; produces a
list of pages where each reference is cited in the bibliography.
mlineno; used for producing line numbers in reports;
There is a number of books available about TeX and LaTeX, the most
important of which are the following:
Lamport, L., "LaTeX: a document preparation system. User's Guide
and Reference Manual", 2nd edn, Reading, Massachusetts:
Addison-Wesley, 1994, 272 p.
The indispensable introduction to LaTeX.
Goosens, M., Mittelbach, F., Samarin, A., "The LaTeX companion",
Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1994, 528 + 2 p.
The equally indispensable book for people who want to really use
LaTeX for production purposes.
Knuth, D. E., "The TeXbook", Reading, Massachusetts:
Addison-Wesley, 1984, 483 p.
The only reference you'll ever need regarding the TeX system, which
is underlying LaTeX. This is good to have as a reference, when you
are reading LaTeX package source code, and don't understand what's
happening.
Goosens, M., Rahtz, S., Mittelbach, F., "The LaTeX graphics companion",
Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1997, 554 p.
A handy reference for how to use graphics with LaTeX. However, for
the purposes of the TDB project, using the graphicx LaTeX
package and reading its accompanying documentation is often an
easier alternative.
Goosens, M., Rahtz, S., "The LaTeX web companion",
Reading, Massachusetts: Addison-Wesley, 1999, 522 p.
Contains a lot of interesting material on web publishing and how to
use LaTeX for this purpose. For the purposes of the LaTeX project,
Chapter 2 of the book is the most relevant. The TDB project uses a
mildly revised version of the hyperref package together
with Adobe Acrobat Distiller to produce PDF documents.
