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Guide to LaTeX (4th Edition) (Tools and Techniques

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B<br />

The LAT E X Clockwork<br />

In this appendix, we describe how the T E X program <strong>and</strong> L AT E X files are<br />

installed, how they are organized, what their roles are. Throughout this<br />

book we have given examples of contributed packages, but here we list<br />

those packages <strong>and</strong> other files that belong <strong>to</strong> the ‘kernel’, the essential<br />

installation. In Section B.6, we explain how L AT E X ticks, what happens<br />

during a processing run, <strong>and</strong> what all the various file types mean.<br />

B.1 Installing L AT E X<br />

We explain first L AT E X installations in general before looking at the particular<br />

one provided on the enclosed T E XLive CD.<br />

B.1.1 T E X implementations<br />

One must have the T E X program <strong>and</strong> its auxiliaries (METAFONT, font files)<br />

before L AT E X can be set up on <strong>to</strong>p of it. Installing T E X is a somewhat<br />

daunting experience, but thankfully it need not be done very often <strong>and</strong><br />

there are many ready-<strong>to</strong>-run implementations available for practically<br />

every computer operating system. These can be obtained from CTAN<br />

under the direc<strong>to</strong>ry systems (Figure B.4 on page 390) or from the T E X<br />

Users Group (www.tug.org).<br />

The system delivered with the T E XLive CD is that developed by Karl<br />

Berry known generically as Web2c. This name derives from the fact that it<br />

converts Donald Knuth’s original T E X source files from his Web language<br />

(no relation <strong>to</strong> the World Wide Web) in<strong>to</strong> the C programming language for<br />

subsequent compilation with a C compiler. The teT E X implementation, by<br />

Thomas Esser, applies Web2c <strong>to</strong> Unix machines, while Fabrice Popineau’s<br />

fpT E X is the Win32 (Windows 95, 98, NT, 2000, XP) version.<br />

Another excellent T E X implementation for Windows is MikT E X by Christian<br />

Schenk, available from CTAN under systems/win32/miktex/.<br />

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