An Introduction to TeX

Part I, introduces TeX and the tools that make up the TeX system. It describes various editing environments that simplify the job of editing TeX documents. It also discusses the mechanics of running TeX and recovery from errors, and it provides an overview of TeX macro packages and format files.

Table of Contents

1. The Big Picture
What Is TeX?
TeX for Beginners
Boxes and Glue
Control Sequences
Special Characters
Text Formatting Versus Word Processing
What About Desktop Publishing?
What About troff?
What About SGML?
How TeX Works
TeXing a Simple Document
TeXing More Complex Documents
Building a Table of Contents
Figure References
Indexes and Glossaries
Bibliographies
Special Things
2. Editing
What Can an Editor Do?
Quoting Automatically
Matching Braces
Inserting Common Control Sequences
Running TeX Automatically
GNU Emacs
Starting TeX Mode
Typing in Emacs
Running TeX Automatically
aucTeX
Starting aucTeX
Typing in aucTeX
aucTeX Outline Mode
Intelligent Paragraph Reformatting
Multi-file Documents
Running TeX
Finding Errors
Multi-Edit
Setting Up TeX Support
Typing in Multi-Edit
Running TeX
Brief
MicroEMACS
epm: OS/2's Enhanced Editor
Other Tools
TeX as a Compiler
Processing a Document
Spellchecking
ispell
amSpell
Revision Control
TeX Shells
TeXShell
TeXPert
4TeX
PMTeX
TeXit
3. Running TeX
What Do You Run?
What Files Does TeX Need?
Pool Files
Format Files
User Files
The Command Line
Command-line Options
Command-line Cautions
TeX Without Options
What About Errors?
Log Files
Interpreting TeX Error Messages
Naming a File TeX Cannot Find
Misspelling a Control Sequence Name
Failure to Close an Environment
Math Outside of Math Mode
Missing Fonts
Everything Else
The Question Mark Prompt
4. Macro Packages
Installation: Making Format Files
Hyphenation Patterns
General-purpose Formats
Plain TeX
Extended Plain TeX
LaTeX2e Versus LaTeX
LaTeX2e
LaTeX
AMSTeX
AMSLaTeX
Lollipop
TeXinfo
Other Formats
Special-purpose Formats
SliTeX
FoilTeX
Seminar
TeX in Color
Setting Up Color
Using Color
Now I've Got Color, but I Need Black and White!
Color Under LaTeX2e
Color Is Subtle
Further Reading