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The TeX Catalogue by Graham Williams

Topic Index by Jürgen Fenn

Last modified: 1 September 2008

 

This part of the TeX Catalogue eventually will list all packages available from the "Comprehensive TeX Archive Network", or CTAN, for using plain TeX, LaTeX, ConTeXt, etc. by topic. We also try to give some advice that might help you in getting software and guides not available on CTAN.

New packages on CTAN and package updates are announced on the tex-announce mailing list which is also available from Mail Archive, as well as from Gmane.org (blog and rss feed).

Every systematical order is arbitrary in some way or another. This is why entries may appear in more than one place. The following order generally tries to keep to that of "The LaTeX Companion", 2nd. ed., by Mittelbach, Goosens, et. al.

Contrary to the other parts of the TeX Catalogue, the Topic Index is not (yet) compiled automatically. This is very much a work in progress, so suggestions are quite welcome. As every complex document, the Topic Index is full of errors, so please do not hesitate to report them to the maintainer.

Thanks to Morten Høgholm, Uwe Lück, and Andrea Blomenhofer for proofreading and for making lots of suggestions for improving the Topic Index.

Contents

 

 References and Manuals

You should refer to "lshort" for the basic rules for writing correct LaTeX2e.
On the other hand, the most common mistakes in using LaTeX2e and how to avoid them are listed in Mark Trettin's guide "l2tabu" available in German, English, French, and Italian.

Below are some TeX resources online mostly outside CTAN that deserve to be mentioned, too:

A comprehensive commented reference of the commands available both in LaTeX and the most popular packages can be found at Michael Wiedmann's tex-refs project.

Herbert Voß has gathered together a rather comprehensive collection of Tips & Tricks on (La)TeX.

There also is Norman Walsh's help for Plain TeX, LaTeX, BibTeX, MakeIndex, and SliTeX.

Tutorials on TeX by TUG India are available online, or as PDF. There also is Peter Flynn's Beginner's Introduction available both online and for download.

For news on the development of LaTeX see the LaTeX3 Project.
The ConTeXt project, too, has a homepage of its own.

 Frequently asked questions:

For practical tips on how to use LaTeX in general as well as hints for using particular packages refer to the "Frequently Asked Questions" lists of local TeX User Groups available on the WWW in Czech / Slovak, Dutch, English, French (old and new version), German, Italian, Polish, Spanish, or on CTAN:

 LaTeX Documentation by the LaTeX3 Project:

 Introduction to LaTeX "lshort":

 Usage Guide "l2tabu":

 Some more guides to (La)TeX:

 Templates for using LaTeX, and Examples from Books on LaTeX:

  Fonts and Graphics:

 Mathematics:

 (La)TeX on Windows:

There are two guides for installing LaTeX on Windows in the first place: Joachim Schlosser provides a guide for a complete setup both in German and in English, while Viktor Witting, Maik Scherer, Florian Hibler, Johannes Schubert, Mathias Wasserthal, and Andreas Hirsch also supply a comprehensive guide to installing a complete MiKTeX system.

 Developing (La)TeX Packages:

 Publishing with TeX:

 (La)TeX on the Web:

 (La)TeX vs. Word Processors:

LyX is an advanced alternative to word processors which is based on LaTeX.

You may also input text using OpenOffice Writer and later convert it to LaTeX, or HTML with Henrik Just's Java-based Writer2LaTeX.

The TUG offers an overview of converters from PC Textprocessors to LaTeX and vice versa. Some of the converters between LaTeX and word processor formats can be found on CTAN.

 The Symbols available in (La)TeX:

See also the section on symbol fonts.

 Typesetting Tables:

 Managing Bibliographies:

 TUGboat:

 Typography:

 Tips for using fancyhdr:

 Tips for using Floats:

 Components of TeX:

 The TeX Directory Structure documentation:

 Standards for DVI files

 Book Reviews:

 Publicity for (La)TeX:

 Donald E. Knuth's Own Documentation of TeX and Metafont:

 

 Alternative Document Classes

These class files provide an alternative to the usual LaTeX article, report, or book classes. They are used to change document layout in general and they usually provide some special features, as well. You should check the class file documentation first to make sure whether you can use options or commands that are part of the respective class file before considering the use of one of the packages listed below in alphabetical order.

There are some alternatives to letter.cls, too, for writing letters and faxes.

There are also classes for typesetting theses and papers for scientific journals which also might be of interest to users of TeX in general.

 CJW:

 KOMA-Script:

 Memoir:

 NCC-LaTeX:

 NTG Class:

 Octavo:

 Refman:

 

 Document Structure

 Document and Section Titles:

 Abstract:

 Table of Contents:

 Changing the Counting of Chapters:

 Crossreferences:

 Footnotes, Endnotes, and Margin Notes:

There are some packages for working on critical editions for those interested in the Humanities.

 Appendix:

 

 Formatting

 Enumerating and Listing Items:

 Verbatim Input and Quoting:

 Underlining, Letterspacing etc.:

 Raggedright and Raggedleft Typesetting

 Formatting Paragraphs

 Creating Boxes

 

 Page Layout

 Page Margins:

 Page Headings:

scrpage2 is another package for manipulating page headings and footers that comes with the koma-script bundle.

 Landscape Format:

 Typesetting Posters:

 Cropmarks:

 

 Page Numbers

 

 Manipulating Counters

 

 Line and Paragraph Numbers

There are packages for working on critical editions.

 

 Columns in a Page

 

 Tables

See also packages for floats.
There are guides to typesetting tables.
There is Calc2LaTeX for converting OpenOffice spreadsheets to LaTeX tables.

 Typesetting Long Tables:

 Formatting Decimal Columns:

 Adding some Colour to Tables:

There are packages for colour and shading in general.

 Misc:

 

 Floats

See also the packages for including graphics and tables.

 

 Creating Indices and Glossaries

 

 Bibliography

For showing \cite and \bibitem crossreferences use the drftcite package.

 BibTeX:

Jean-Olivier Irisson provides a LaTeX Bibliography Styles Database if you are looking for a particular bibliography (BibTeX or amsrefs) style for use with a journal you wish to publish your paper in.

 Formatting Citations and Your Bibliography:

Below, major bibliography styles are sorted according to the systems used in different fields of research. E. g., in the humanities we mostly use short-title systems that require styles different from the standard numerical system supported by LaTeX natively. However, there are more packages for formatting numerical systems differently, and author-year systems are also supported.

Please note that this section only lists the major bibliographic styles. So if you are watching for a particular style please refer to the sections Some more Bibliography Styles, Multilingual Support, and Science respectively.

 Numerical System:

 Author-Year System:

 Author-Number System:

 Short-Title System:

 Some more Bibliography Styles:

 Multilingual Bibliographies:

 Multiple Bibliographies in a document:

 Tools for managing your Bibliography:

Some tools that quite facilitate editing your BibTeX database, and that help manage your bibliography.

 Converters for BibTeX databases:

 Some more additional Packages:

 

 Fonts

See also PostScript Support, and Creating PDF Documents.
PostScript Type 1, and Type 3 Fonts are listed in this section.
There are guides on using different types of fonts.

 Computer Modern Fonts:

 Extended Computer Fonts:

 Text Companion Fonts:

 The Concrete Fonts:

 CM-super Fonts:

 Latin Modern Fonts:

 The Bera Fonts:

 AMS Fonts for Mathematical Typesetting:

 PostScript Type1 Fonts:

 PostScript Type3 Fonts:

 TrueType Fonts:

 MetaFont and MetaPost:

 Symbol Fonts:

The PostScript symbol fonts Zapf Dingbats are supported by the pifont package which is part of psnfss.

An overview of the symbols available in LaTeX can be found in the the comprehensive symbols list. See also the section on the symbols in (La)TeX in the References section.

 The "Euro" Currency Symbol €:

 Typesetting Barcode:

 Typesetting Initials:

 Historic Fonts:

 Antiquity and Early Ages:

 Gothic Fonts:

 Bookhand Fonts:

 Runes:

 Typesetting Handwriting:

 Installing Fonts:

 Misc: