Frequently Asked Question List for TeX
The TeX Frequently Asked Question List
Question Categories
- Background
- Bibliographies
- Concepts
- Documentation
- Errors
- Floats
- Fonts
- Formatting
- Graphics
- Installing
- Misc
- Programming
- Usage
Question Tags
Citations – Classes – Ctan – Deprecated – Figures – Footnotes – Hyphenation – Index – Labels – Latex – Latex3 – Layout – Lists – Luatex – Macros – Math – Metafont – Pdftex – References – Structure – Tables – Toc – Unicode – Xetex
Background
- Getting started
- How can I be sure it’s really TeX?
- How does LaTeX relate to Plain TeX?
- How should I pronounce “LaTeX(2ε)”?
- How should I pronounce “TeX”?
- If TeX is so good, how come it’s free?
- Reading (La)TeX files
- Should I use Plain TeX or LaTeX?
- TeX User Groups
- The CTAN catalogue
- Things with “TeX” in the name
- What are XeTeX and LuaTeX?
- What are the AMS packages (
amsmath, etc.)? - What is ε-TeX?
- What is CTAN?
- What is ConTeXt?
- What is Eplain?
- What is LaTeX2e?
- What is LaTeX?
- What is MetaFont?
- What is MetaPost?
- What is TeX?
- What is Texinfo?
- What is pdfTeX?
- What is the future of TeX?
- What’s “writing in TeX”?
- Why is TeX not a WYSIWYG system?
Bibliographies
- Accents in bibliographies
- BibTeX sorting and name prefixes
- Capitalisation in BibTeX
- Choosing a bibliography style
- Creating a BibTeX bibliography file
- Creating a bibliography style
- Format of numbers in the bibliography
- Listing all your BibTeX entries
- Making HTML of your Bibliography
- Multi-letter initials in BibTeX
- Multiple bibliographies?
- Multiple citations
- Non-english bibliographies
- Normal use of BibTeX from LaTeX
- Putting bibliography entries in text
- Reconstructing
bibfiles - Reducing spacing in the bibliography
- References from the bibliography to the citation
- Separate bibliographies per chapter?
- Sorting and compressing citations
- Sorting lists of citations
- String too long in BibTeX
- Table of contents rearranges “
unsrt” ordering - URLs in BibTeX bibliographies
- Using BibTeX with Plain TeX
Concepts
- Adobe font formats
- Documented LaTeX sources (
dtxfiles) - How does hyphenation work in TeX?
- Spawning programs from (La)TeX: \write18
- Unicode and TeX
- What are “resolutions”?
- What are (TeX) macros
- What are LaTeX “environments”
- What are LaTeX classes and packages?
- What are PK files?
- What are TFM files?
- What are encodings?
- What are the EC fonts?
- What are virtual fonts?
- What is “Encapsulated PostScript” (“EPS”)?
- What is a DVI driver?
- What is a DVI file?
- What is the “Berry naming scheme”?
- What is the TDS?
- Writing (text) files from TeX
\specialcommands
Documentation
- (La)TeX tutorials
- BibTeX Documentation
- Books on LaTeX
- Books on TeX, Plain TeX and relations
- Books on Type
- Books on other TeX-related matters
- Books relevant to TeX and friends
- Documentation of packages
- Freely available (La)TeX books
- Getting help online
- How to ask a question
- How to make a “minimum example”
- Learning to write LaTeX classes and packages
- MetaFont and MetaPost Tutorials
- Online introductions: LaTeX
- Online introductions: Plain TeX
- Reference documents
- Specialist mailing lists
- The PicTeX manual
- Tutorials, etc., for TeX-based systems
- Typography tutorials
- WIKI books for TeX and friends
- Where can I find the symbol for …
- Where to find FAQs
Errors
- Accents misbehave in
tabbing - Alignment tab changed to
\cr - An extra
}? - Capacity exceeded [semantic nest …]
- Capacity exceeded — input levels
- Checksum mismatch in font
- Controlling widows and orphans
- Enlarging TeX
- Entering compatibility mode
- Extra vertical space in floats
- Fatal format file error; I’m stymied
- Float(s) lost
- Graphics division by zero
- How to approach errors
- I asked for “empty”, but the page is numbered
- Illegal parameter number in definition
- Improper
\hyphenationwill be flushed - LaTeX gets cross-references wrong
- LaTeX won’t include from other directories
- Link text doesn’t break at end line
- Mismatched mode ljfour and resolution 8000
- Missing
$inserted - Missing
\begin{document} - Missing number, treated as zero
- Missing symbol commands
- My brackets don’t match
- No line here to end
- No room for a new “thing”
- Non-PDF special ignored!
- Not in outer par mode
- Old LaTeX font references such as
\tenrm - Option clash for package
- Package reports “command already defined”
- Page number is wrong at start of page
- Perhaps a missing
\item? - Please type a command or say
\end - Start of line goes awry
- Support package
expl3too old - The font size command
\normalsizeis not defined - The structure of TeX error messages
- Token not allowed in PDFDocEncoded string
- Too deeply nested
- Too many math alphabets
- Too many unprocessed floats
- Two-column float numbers out of order
- Unable to read an entire line
- Underlined text won’t break
- Unknown graphics extension
- What’s happened to
initex? - Where are the
amfonts? - Where are the
msxandmsyfonts? - Why are my sections numbered 0.1 …?
- Why doesn’t verbatim work within …?
- Why is my table/figure/… not centred?
\endoccurred inside a group\spacefactorcomplaints- epsf gives up after a bit
- pdfTeX destination … ignored
Floats
- Centring a very wide figure or table
- Diagonal separation in corner cells of tables
- Facing floats on 2-page spread
- Figure (or table) exactly where I want it
- Fixed-width tables
- Floats in multicolumn setting
- Floats on their own on float pages
- Flowing text around figures
- How to alter the alignment of tabular cells
- How to change a whole row of a table
- Merging cells in a column of a table
- Moving tables and figures in LaTeX
- Placing two-column floats at bottom of page
- Spacing lines in tables
- Tables longer than a single page
- The design of tables
- The thickness of rules in LaTeX tables
- Variable-width columns in tables
- Vertical layout of float pages
- What is the difference between
arrayandtabularenvironments
Fonts
- Acquiring bitmap fonts
- Characters disappear from figures in pdfTeX
- Choice of Type 1 fonts for typesetting Maths
- Deploying Type 1 fonts
- Fonts go fuzzy when you switch to T1
- Fuzzy fonts because
Ghostscripttoo old - Getting “free” fonts not in your distribution
- Getting MetaFont to do what you want
- Previewing files using Type 1 fonts
- TeX font metric files for Type 1 fonts
- The wrong type of fonts in PDF
- Unicode Maths using OpenType fonts
- Using Adobe Type 1 fonts with TeX
- Using non-standard fonts in Plain TeX
- Using the “Concrete” fonts
- Using the Latin Modern fonts
- Weird characters in
dvipsoutput - Which font files should be kept
Formatting
- 1-column abstract in 2-column document
- A “report” from lots of ‘article’s
- Adobe
Readermessing with print size - Alternative head- and footlines in LaTeX
- Appendixes
- Balancing columns at the end of a document
- Better script fonts for maths
- Bibliography, index, etc., in TOC
- Big letters at the start of a paragraph
- Breaking boxes of text
- Cancelling
\raggedcommands - Changing margins “on the fly”
- Changing the margins in LaTeX
- Changing the space between letters
- Code listings in LaTeX
- Creating posters with LaTeX
- Double-spaced documents in LaTeX
- Formatting a thesis in LaTeX
- Generating an index in (La)TeX
- Getting the right paper geometry from (La)TeX
- How to create a
\subsubsubsection - How to create crop marks
- How to get copyright, trademark, etc.
- How to get rid of page numbers
- How to set up page layout “by hand”
- How to type an “@” sign?
- How to typeset an underscore character
- Including a file verbatim in LaTeX
- Including line numbers in typeset output
- Indent after section headings
- Letters and the like
- Multiple indexes
- My section title is too wide for the page header
- Other “document font” sizes?
- Overstriking characters
- Packages to set up page designs
- Page numbering “‹n› of ‹m›”
- Page numbering by chapter
- Parallel setting of text
- Preventing a ligature
- Preventing page breaks between lines
- Printing the time
- Producing presentations (including slides)
- Putting things at fixed positions on the page
- Realistic quotes for verbatim listings
- Really blank pages between chapters
- Referring to labels in other documents
- Referring to things by their name
- Replacing the standard classes
- Setting bold Greek letters in LaTeX maths
- Setting papers for journals
- Setting text ragged right
- Symbols for the number sets
- Table of contents, etc., per chapter
- The Principal Value Integral symbol
- The format of the Table of Contents, etc.
- The size of printed output
- The style of captions
- The style of document titles
- The style of section headings
- Typesetting URLs
- Typesetting epigraphs
- Typesetting music in TeX
- Typesetting pseudocode in LaTeX
- Typesetting the Euro sign
- Typesetting things in landscape orientation
- Unnumbered sections in the Table of Contents
- Using “old-style” figures
- Using symbols
- Watermarks on every page
- Wide figures in two-column documents
- Zero paragraph indent
- Curriculum Vitae (Résumé)
Graphics
- Displaying MetaPost output in
ghostscript - Drawing Feynman diagrams in LaTeX
- Drawing a rule
- Drawing with TeX
- Imported graphics in
dvipdfm - Imported graphics in
dvips - Imported graphics in pdfLaTeX
- Importing graphics from “somewhere else”
- Importing graphics into (La)TeX documents
- In-line source for graphics applications
- Labelling graphics
- Limit the width of imported graphics
- Modern graphics file names
- Portable imported graphics
- Repeated graphics in a document
- Top-aligning imported graphics
Installing
- (La)TeX for different machines
- (Modern) Windows systems
- Commercial TeX implementations
- Contributing a file to the archives
- Finding (La)TeX files
- Finding new fonts
- Finding packages to install
- Generating package documentation
- Installation using MiKTeX package manager
- Installation using TeX Live manager
- Installing a PostScript printer built-in font
- Installing a Type 1 font
- Installing a font provided as MetaFont source
- Installing a new font
- Installing files “where (La)TeX can find them”
- Installing the Type 1 versions of the CM fonts
- Installing things on a (La)TeX system
- Installing using ready-built ZIP files
- Macintosh systems
- Other systems’ TeX availability
- Preparing a Type 1 font
- Private installations of files
- Ready-built installation files on the archive
- Repositories of TeX material
- Shortcuts to installing files
- TeX-friendly editors and shells
- Temporary installation of (La)TeX files
- The TeX collection
- Tidying up after installation
- Unix and GNU Linux systems
- Unpacking LaTeX packages
- What was the CTAN
nonfreetree? - Where to install packages
- Which tree to use
Misc
- (La)TeX-friendly drawing packages
- Alternatives to TeX
- Automatic sizing of
minipage - Conversion from (La)TeX to HTML
- Conversion from (La)TeX to plain text
- Conversion from SGML or HTML to TeX
- DVI previewers
- DVI to PostScript conversion programs
- Drawing packages for LaTeX
- Generating bitmaps from DVI
- How many words have you written?
- Making outline fonts from MetaFont
- Math on the Web
- Other conversions to and from (La)TeX
- Output to “other” printers
- Quality of PDF from PostScript
- Redefining counters’
\the-commands - Replacing the BibTeX–LaTeX mechanism
- Reporting a LaTeX bug
- Retrieving (La)TeX from DVI, etc.
- Spelling checkers for work with TeX
- Submitting new material for the FAQ
- TeX Engine development
- The LaTeX project
- The TeX document preparation environment
- Translating LaTeX to Plain TeX
- Typesetting all those TeX-related logos
- Using TeX to read SGML or XML directly
- WEB systems for various languages
- What is Literate Programming?
- What to do if you find a bug
- You don’t understand the answer
Programming
- Active characters in command arguments
- Adjusting the presentation of section numbers
- Am I using pdfTeX, XeTeX or LuaTeX?
- Changing the words
babeluses - Commands defined with * options
- Comparing the “job name”
- Defining LaTeX commands within other commands
- Defining a macro from an argument
- Defining characters as macros
- Defining macros within macros
- Detecting that something is empty
- Finding if a label is undefined
- Finding if you’re on an odd or an even page
- Finding the width of a letter, word, or phrase
- Fonts at arbitrary sizes
- How to break the 9-argument limit
- How to change LaTeX’s “fixed names”
- How to change the format of labels
- How to print contents of variables?
- Is the argument a number?
- Is this command defined?
- Key-value input for macros and package options
- LaTeX internal “abbreviations”, etc.
- LaTeX3 programming
- Making labels from a counter
- Master and slave counters
- More than one optional argument
- Non-letters in macro names
- Optional arguments like
\section - Patching existing commands
- Preferring
\newcommand*over\newcommand - Process a CSV file in LaTeX
- Repeating a command n times
- Repeating something for each ‘thing’ in a set
- Spaces in macros
- Subverting a token register
- The definitions of LaTeX commands
- The quality of your LaTeX
- There’s a space added after my environment
- Transcribing LaTeX command definitions
- Using Plain or primitive commands in LaTeX
- Using labels as counter values
- What’s the reason for “protection”?
\@and@in macro names\edefdoes not work with\protect
Usage
- (La)TeX makes overfull lines
- (Merely) peculiar hyphenation
- Accented words aren’t hyphenated
- Adjusting maths font sizes
- All the files used by this document
- Bits of document from other directories
- Cancelling terms in maths expressions
- Case-changing oddities
- Characters missing from PDF output
- Commands gobble following space
- Conditional compilation and “comments”
- Copy-paste-able/searchable PDF files
- Defining a new log-like function in LaTeX
- Ellipses
- Even subscript height
- Fancy enumeration lists
- Finding “8-bit” Type 1 fonts
- Footnotes in LaTeX section headings
- Footnotes in captions
- Footnotes in tables
- Footnotes numbered “per page”
- Footnotes whose texts are identical
- Getting
\marginparon the right side - How many pages are there in my document?
- How to adjust list spacing
- How to do bold-tt or bold-sc
- Hyperref and repeated page numbers
- Hyphenation exceptions
- Including Plain TeX files in LaTeX
- Interrupting enumerated lists
- Line-breaking in in-line maths
- Makefiles for LaTeX documents
- Making PDF documents from (La)TeX
- Making hypertext documents from TeX
- Marking changed parts of your document
- Maths symbols don’t scale up
- More than one sequence of footnotes
- My words aren’t being hyphenated
- Not resetting footnote numbers per chapter
- Numbers for referenced equations only
- Numbers too large in table of contents, etc.
- Only one
\baselineskipper paragraph - Preventing hyphenation of a particular word
- Proof environment
- Re-using an equation
- Replacing Type 3 fonts in PostScript
- Rerun messages won't go away
- Running equation, figure and table numbering
- Set specifications and Dirac brackets
- Stopping all hyphenation
- Sub- and superscript positioning for operators
- Text inside maths
- The comma as a decimal separator
- Theorem bodies printed in a roman font
- Using a new language with Babel
- Version control using RCS, CVS or the like
- Weird hyphenation of words
- What’s going on in my
\includecommands? - What’s the name of this file
- What’s wrong with
\bf,\it, etc.? - What’s wrong with
\newfont? - Where have my characters gone?
- Why bother with
inputencandfontenc? - Why does LaTeX split footnotes across pages?
- Why does it ignore paragraph parameters?
- Why doesn’t
\linespreadwork? - Why is the inside margin so narrow?
- Why not use
eqnarray? - Why use
\[…\]in place of$$…$$?