173 lines
8.5 KiB
HTML
173 lines
8.5 KiB
HTML
<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 3.2 Final//EN">
|
|
<HTML>
|
|
<HEAD>
|
|
<META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="SGML-Tools 1.0.9">
|
|
<TITLE>The teTeX HOWTO: The Linux-teTeX Local Guide: Introduction.</TITLE>
|
|
<LINK HREF="TeTeX-HOWTO-2.html" REL=next>
|
|
|
|
<LINK HREF="TeTeX-HOWTO.html#toc1" REL=contents>
|
|
</HEAD>
|
|
<BODY>
|
|
<A HREF="TeTeX-HOWTO-2.html">Next</A>
|
|
Previous
|
|
<A HREF="TeTeX-HOWTO.html#toc1">Contents</A>
|
|
<HR>
|
|
<H2><A NAME="s1">1. Introduction.</A></H2>
|
|
|
|
<P>
|
|
<H2><A NAME="ss1.1">1.1 Copyright.</A>
|
|
</H2>
|
|
|
|
<P>The teTeX-HOWTO is copyright (C) 1997, 1998 by Robert Kiesling.
|
|
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this
|
|
manual provided that the copyright notice and this permission notice
|
|
are preserved on all copies.
|
|
<P>Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this
|
|
manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided also that
|
|
the sections entitled, ``Distribution,'' and, ``GNU General Public
|
|
License,'' are included exactly as in the original, and provided that
|
|
the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a
|
|
permission notice identical to this one.
|
|
<P>Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this
|
|
manual into another language, under the above conditions for modified
|
|
versions. except that the sections entitled, ``Distribution,'' and,
|
|
``GNU General Public License,'' may be included in a translation
|
|
approved by the Free Software Foundation instead of in the original
|
|
English. Please refer to Section
|
|
<A HREF="TeTeX-HOWTO-10.html#copyright">Distribution and Copyright</A> for terms of copying.
|
|
<P>
|
|
<H2><A NAME="ss1.2">1.2 Software described in this document.</A>
|
|
</H2>
|
|
|
|
<P>TeX handles only the formatting part of the document preparation.
|
|
Generating output from TeX is like compiling source code into object
|
|
code, which still needs to be linked. You prepare an input file with
|
|
a text editor----what most people think of as ``word processing''---
|
|
and format the input file document with TeX to produce a
|
|
device-independent output file, called a <CODE>.dvi</CODE> file.
|
|
<P>You also need a program or two to translate TeX's <CODE>.dvi</CODE> output
|
|
for your screen and printer. These programs are collectively known as
|
|
``dviware.'' For example, TeX itself only makes requests for fonts.
|
|
It is up to the <CODE>.dvi</CODE> output translator to provide the actual
|
|
font for the output regardless of whether the medium is a video screen
|
|
or paper. This extra step may seem overly complicated, but the
|
|
abstraction allows documents to display the same on different devices
|
|
with little or no change to the original document.
|
|
<P>
|
|
<P>
|
|
<P>
|
|
<H3>teTeX.</H3>
|
|
|
|
<P>TeX is implemented for practically every serious computer system in
|
|
the world---and quite a few ``non-serious'' ones---so implementors
|
|
must provide the installation facilities for all of them. This
|
|
accounts in part for teTeX's complexity, in addition to the inherent
|
|
complexity of any TeX installation. It also accounts for the fact
|
|
that installing the system yourself is a significant task, and unless
|
|
you are already familiar with TeX, it is easy to get lost in the
|
|
numerous executable programs, TeX files, documentation, and fonts.
|
|
<P>Fortunately, teTeX is part of the GNU/Linux distribution. You can
|
|
install the package much more easily using GNU/Linux installation
|
|
tools. You may already have teTeX installed on your system. If so,
|
|
you can skip ahead to Section
|
|
<A HREF="TeTeX-HOWTO-2.html#sec-using">Using teTeX</A>.
|
|
<P>However, if you want to install the package, the archives necessary
|
|
for a workable teTeX installation are on the CTAN archive network.
|
|
There is a list of these sites in Section
|
|
<A HREF="TeTeX-HOWTO-8.html#ctan-list">CTAN site list</A>.
|
|
<P>CTAN is the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network, a series of anonymous
|
|
FTP sites that archive TeX programs, macros, fonts, and documentation.
|
|
In the course of using TeX you'll probably become familiar with at
|
|
least one CTAN site. In this document, a pathname like
|
|
<CODE>~CTAN/contrib/pstricks</CODE> means ``look in the directory
|
|
<CODE>contrib/pstricks</CODE> of your nearest CTAN site.''
|
|
<P>The installation of the generic teTeX distribution described in
|
|
Section
|
|
<A HREF="TeTeX-HOWTO-9.html#ctan-install">Installing the CTAN teTeX distribution</A> concentrates on the Intel versions of Linux.
|
|
Installing teTeX on other hardware should require only substituting
|
|
the appropriate executable program archive in the installation
|
|
process.
|
|
<P>In addition to the executable programs, the distribution includes all
|
|
of the TeX and LaTeX package, <CODE>metafont</CODE> and its sources,
|
|
<CODE>bibtex, makeindex,</CODE> and <EM>all</EM> of the
|
|
documentation... more than 4 megabytes' worth. The documentation
|
|
covers everything you will forseeably need to know to get started.
|
|
So, you should install all of the documents. Not only will you
|
|
eventually read them, the documents themselves provide many examples
|
|
of ``live'' TeX and LaTeX code.
|
|
<P>TeX was written by Professor Donald Knuth of Stanford University. It
|
|
is a lower-level typesetting language for all of the higher-level
|
|
packages like LaTeX. Essentially, LaTeX is a set of TeX macros that
|
|
provide convenient, predefined document formats for end users. If you
|
|
like the formats provided by LaTeX, you may never need to learn
|
|
bare-bones TeX programming. The difference between the two languages
|
|
is like the difference between assembly language and C. You can have
|
|
the speed and flexibility of TeX, or the convenience of LaTeX.
|
|
<P>By the way, the letters of the word ``TeX'' are Greek,
|
|
tau-epsilon-chi. It is not a fraternity, but the root of the Greek
|
|
word, <EM>techne,</EM> which means art and/or science. ``TeX'' is not
|
|
pronounced like the first syllable in ``Texas.'' The <EM>chi</EM> has
|
|
no English equivalent, but TeX is generally pronounced so that it
|
|
rhymes with ``yecch,'' to use Professor Knuth's example from <EM>The
|
|
TeXBook,</EM> which is one of the standard TeX references. When
|
|
writing, ``TeX,'' on character devices, always use the standard
|
|
capitalization, or the <CODE>\TeX{}</CODE> macro in typesetting.
|
|
<P>
|
|
<H3>Text editors.</H3>
|
|
|
|
<P>Any of the editors that work under Linux---<CODE>jed, joe, jove,
|
|
vi, vim, stevie,</CODE> Emacs, and microemacs---will work to prepare a
|
|
TeX input file, as long as the editor reads and writes plain-vanilla
|
|
ASCII text. My preference is GNU Emacs. There are several reasons
|
|
for this:
|
|
<UL>
|
|
<LI>You can format, preview and print documents with Emacs's
|
|
TeX and LaTeX modes.</LI>
|
|
<LI>Emacs can automatically insert TeX-style, ``curly
|
|
quotes,'' as you type, rather than the "ASCII-vanilla"
|
|
kind. </LI>
|
|
<LI>Emacs has integrated support for Texinfo, a hypertext
|
|
documentation system. </LI>
|
|
<LI>Emacs is widely supported. Versions 19.34 and later, for example,
|
|
are included in the major U.S. Linux distributions. The most recent
|
|
version from the GNU archives is 20.3.</LI>
|
|
<LI>Emacs does everything except butter the
|
|
toast in the morning. </LI>
|
|
<LI>Emacs is free.</LI>
|
|
</UL>
|
|
<P>
|
|
<H3><CODE>dvips</CODE>.</H3>
|
|
|
|
<P>Tomas Rokicki's <CODE>dvips</CODE> generates Postscript from a
|
|
<CODE>.dvi</CODE> file. In addition, it runs Metafont if necessary to
|
|
generate the bit mapped fonts it needs or uses Postscript fonts for
|
|
the output. It can also crop and resize pages and perform graphics
|
|
translations from instructions in a TeX or LaTeX file,
|
|
<P>The <CODE>dvips</CODE> program is part of the teTeX distribution. It is
|
|
discussed fully in Section
|
|
<A HREF="TeTeX-HOWTO-6.html#dvips">Mixing text and graphics with <tt>dvips</tt></A><P>
|
|
<H3>Fonts.</H3>
|
|
|
|
<P>Much of TeX's, and therefore LaTeX's, complexity, arises from its
|
|
implementation of various font systems, and the way these fonts are
|
|
specified. A major improvement of LaTeX 2e over its predecessor was
|
|
the way users specify fonts, the former New Font Selection Scheme.
|
|
They're discussed in Section
|
|
<A HREF="TeTeX-HOWTO-4.html#characters">Characters and type styles</A>, Section
|
|
<A HREF="TeTeX-HOWTO-3.html#tex-font-commands">TeX Font Commands</A>, and Section
|
|
<A HREF="TeTeX-HOWTO-7.html#postscript-fonts">Using Postscript fonts</A>.)
|
|
<P>teTeX comes distributed with about a dozen standard fonts preloaded,
|
|
which is enough to get you started. Also provided are the font
|
|
metrics descriptions, in <CODE>.tfm</CODE> (TeX font metric) files. To
|
|
generate the other fonts that you need, it is simply a matter of
|
|
installing the <CODE>metafont</CODE> sources. teTeX's <CODE>.dvi</CODE>
|
|
utilities will invoke <CODE>metafont</CODE> automatically and generate the
|
|
Computer Modern fonts you need.
|
|
<P>
|
|
<HR>
|
|
<A HREF="TeTeX-HOWTO-2.html">Next</A>
|
|
Previous
|
|
<A HREF="TeTeX-HOWTO.html#toc1">Contents</A>
|
|
</BODY>
|
|
</HTML>
|