$VER: UsingLaTeX 2.1 (21.05.95) Using LaTeX on the Amiga how to install and get started with LaTeX on the Amiga Jörgen Grahn Wetterlinsgatan 13e S-521 34 FALKÖPING SWEDEN v1.0 1994-09-05 initial version v2.0 1994-10-03 expanded version, covering LaTeX2e and more of the PasTeX system. v2.1 1995-05-21 added some "final" stuff, will release now Legal These files are FREEWARE, with spelling errors, misinformation and all. Redistribute it if you want to, enhance it and distribute it (under both ours names) if you have the time to. Dedications These files are dedicated to lots of people, dead or alive, including Fidel Castro, Don van Vliet, F Scott Fitzgerald, Don Knuth, Julia Sawalha, Albert Hoffmann, Frank Herbert, Carolyn Scheppner and Barbara Streisand. Abstract LaTeX is a system for creating professional-quality printed documents. These files contain about everything you need to know to start with LaTeX from scratch; basic concepts, how to install, where to get further information - I hope. The perspective is pretty much restricted to my own; my demands and the problems I've faced. Except from this file, I also give you some of my configuration scripts and a directory listing to make installation easier. Introduction LaTeX is an application mostly used by people involved in computer science or mathematics at universities around the world. People use it to create nice-looking printed documents. LaTeX is an alternative way to do things other people do with word processors or desktop publishing programs. LaTeX has several advantages over DTP: o You can type the text with your favourite text editor o LaTeX enforces one of several standard 'looks' on documents, making them look nice without bothering you with the details (at least in theory) o LaTeX encourages writing on an abstract and logical level, and hides most of the visual formatting of the text from the user o You can handle the text much as programmer's handle source code; inserting comments, commenting out parts of the document, probably also use RCS on it o LaTeX gives better-looking output, especially when it comes to mathematics o LaTeX automatically or semi-automatically generates tables of contents, indexes, bibliographies etc. o LaTeX texts can be moved between machines, for example between your Amiga and a university's UNIX system. LaTeX exists on most computers. o LaTeX is free of charge (!) On the other hand, there are drawbacks, of course: o The command language is sometimes very hairy and complicated. o Compiling, font generation and printing takes a lot of time on slower Amigas o You can't see the completed document until you have compiled the source text and started the printing or viewing program - LaTeX is simply the opposite of 'What You See Is What You Get' o Inserting pictures is more problematic than with many programs o It is hard to install and configure it correctly o It is largely unknown in the 'real' world (On the other hand, so is anything except for WordPerfect :-( ) Trying to make it work on the Amiga also has its problems, as I found out when I became interested earlier this year (1994). o LaTeX and the associated utilities are often difficult to install, even for experienced Amiga users. There are seldom installation scripts, the documentation usually assumes you are already familiar with LaTeX, the files are more often than not in German, files are missing, executables are compiled for machines with FPUs... the obstacles can appear endless. o It's hard to know what utilities are needed; several different ones actually do the same thing o Different versions of the same utilities are floating around - it's hard to know if you use the most recent or not I've worked my way through a part of this jungle, and I though my experiences could help others. But please note that I'm not in any way a LaTeX wizard - at least not yet. What is LaTeX? Back in the late 1970s or early 1980s, the famous computer scientist Don Knuth created the language TeX. He got some economical support from AMS (American Mathematical Society), since TeX would be a tool for typesetting mathematical formulas. He made TeX expandable for the user; anyone could expand TeX with his own macros. In fact he made the executable ('the TeX engine') one thing and implemented much of the typesetting commands in separate files (the 'Plain TeX' macro set). A few years later, Leslie Lamport created LaTeX, another set of TeX macros. The LaTeX macro set made made writing documents much easier than Knuth's PlainTeX, and soon became quite popular. Over the years there have been numerous additions to the TeX family of software, especially expansions to LaTeX; new font selection schemes, changed versions for different national languages, new document styles etc. A group of people have been set together to create a new standard version of LaTeX, with the best features from all the packages in his jungle. This group is called 'the LaTeX3 project group'. In 1994, they released LaTeX2e, a version of LaTeX which is a step on the way between Lamport's old LaTeX 2.09 and the coming LaTeX3. LaTeX2e is probably what people will use for a few years. There are other languages based on the TeX engine in use, most notably PlainTeX. If a TeX-looking document doesn't have '\begin{document}' in it somewhere, it isn't a LaTeX document. How do you work with LaTeX? You start by writing your text with your favourite text editor (Cygnus Ed, Emacs or whatever) as usual, but you insert special commands here and there, like '\em' for emphasizing a piece of text (by turning on italic) or '\chapter{}' for creating a new chapter title. There are even commands for drawing simple pictures. Then you run your text through LaTeX, which creates another file, where it arranges the text according to its own rules, numbers chapters and pages, creates a table of contents etc. Then you view this file with a special viewing program (DVI or ShowDVI for example). If you're not satisfied, you change the text and repeat the whole procedure. When the result is acceptable, you either use a utility to print the text on your printer, or you convert it to a Postscript file, for printing on any Postscript printer. Programming in LaTeX - a brief introduction Here's a simple LaTeX document: \documentstyle{article} \begin{document} From symbiosis to parasitism is a short step. The word is now a virus. The flu virus may once have been a healthy lung cell. It is now a parasitic organism that invades and damages the lungs. The word may once have been a healthy neural cell. It is now a parasitic organism that invades and damages the central nervous system. % William S Burroughs: The Ticket That Exploded \end{document} LaTeX doesn't care where you end lines or how many spaces you have between words. All _that_ means to LaTeX is that one word ends and another one starts. Empty lines, though, tell LaTeX that you have started a new paragraph. LaTeX then rearranges the rows, tries to create even right- and left margins, hyphenating words if necessary. It also puts some extra space after .,!? etc. to make the output look nicer and be easier to read. Here are a few common constructions: ``word'' You don't use " in LaTeX to create quotation marks. [Some non-english languages may prefer ''word'' instead.] - an intra-word dash -- 1--2, Monday--Wednesday --- an even longer line---like this. Note that different cultures have different conventions for this type of lines. In modern swedish typography, two '-' and blank spaces looks better -- like this. % Marks the rest of the row as a comment (including the line break) \\ forces a line break \ldots ... \'{e} é \ starts a LaTeX command, for example \em to turn on emphasized text. Commands can take many different forms, and even the same command can be used with many different forms. Some of the forms are: \cmd \cmd\ {\cmd} \cmd{...} \cmd{...}[...] \begin{cmd} ... \end{cmd} \begin{cmd}{...} ... \end{cmd} In the \em case, there is no real command to turn _off_ emphasized text, so you have to create an environment around the text you want emphasized; {\em like this}. Everything that was turned on inside will be turned off after the '}'. \begin{command-name}{arguments}[optional arguments] some text \end{command-name} is also a common construction. For example, to generate an enumeration: \begin{enumerate} \item This is the first thing \item \ldots and this is the second. \end{enumerate} will become: 1. This is the first thing 2. ...and this is the second. The sectioning commands are also common. To start a new section you write '\section{title}'. There are, among others, \subsections and \subsubsections. In some cases you have to help LaTeX when it has problems with something. Usually the problem is finding a place to break the lines in a paragraph. LaTeX seldom hyphenates incorrectly. You probably need to read a few LaTeX documents and a book on LaTeX programming to use it well. How does LaTeX work? Back when Knuth made the TeX engine, he used rather odd programming techniques. That is part of the problem when you use LaTeX. In a special configuration file, you have to give some parameters on how much memory TeX should use for different purposes. It will fail if the file in question needs more memory than that, even if you have 16MB of memory free at the time. Also, the TeX engine comes as two almost identical executable files, initex and virtex. With initex, you create a 'format file' from the LaTeX macros. Virtex then reads this file when you compile a LaTeX documents to get the basic LaTeX macros. If you change the memory configuration file, you probably have to make a new format file. TeX also needs a 'pool'. That's all text (error messages and such) that TeX may print out. Normal programs hold these text _inside_ the executables, but not Knuth's, obviously. Thus, what is needed for a LaTeX compile: o your source text o the TeX engine (virtex) [often you rename it 'latex'] o 'tex.pool' o the configuration file/files o the format file 'latex.fmt' o the other LaTeX macro files that aren't in 'latex.fmt' o Any other macro files that you use in your document, but isn't standard LaTeX. There are many such files in the public domain. o the '.tfm' files, containing information about how wide each character in the differnet fonts is. This is needed so that LaTeX can decide where to break the text into rows, etc. (The names may vary slightly between different versions.) Now, if everything went well, LaTeX generated a whole bunch of files. The ones you see most often are:: .dvi The actual typeset text. Everything needed to print the text is in there, except for the exact shapes of the characters, which are later fetched from the .pk font bitmap files. .aux In this file, information on section titles, page numbers etc. is stored. .toc During the compile, information for the table of contents is saved here. .log All sorts of messages from LaTeX, errors, information on memory useage etc. accumulates here. LaTeX is odd in that it may force you to compile a text two times in a row to get references and tables of contents right. For example, if you put a table of contents at the start of the text, the information that it should contain isn't available until the last page is already typeset. Instead, the table of contents is saved to the .aux and .toc files, and is automatically included the next time you run LaTeX. This of course assumes you don't make any big changes to the text between the compiles - if you did, the table of contents would be obsolete. MetaFont MetaFont is another Don Knuth program, and it follows about the same rules as the TeX engine. There is an inimf program, to generate the format file (containing precompiled MetaFont code), and virmf to compile MetaFont programs. The difference is that MetaFont programs (files ending in '.mf') don't end up a typeset text, but a font image in some certain style (italic, bold, extended bold...) point size and for a certain resolution. It sort of does the same thing for .mf files that Intellifont (on 2.0 systems called Fountain) does for Amiga Compugraphic fonts; transforms a size-indepentent font into a bitmap font of a certain size. MetaFont is special in that it follows a rule of professional typography: that different point sizes of a font should have different shapes for better readability. This is why there are for example cmr5.mf, cmr8.mf and cmr10.mf MetaFont source files; they all create slightly different shapes. When there isn't a suitable size (11 point for example), the closest available is scaled. In typography, 10 point is the normal size, as found in books and magazines. 8 is fairly small, and 12 is fairly large for normal text. MetaFont generates two files useful for LaTeX: the font metrics file, which ends up in TeX:fonts/ with the suffix '.tfm', and the .pk file, which ends up somewhere in TeX:pk/. The .tfm file contains the width and height of each character, and is used by TeX so that it can decide where to break the text into rows. The .pk file is used by the printing program, as it contains the actual characters. LaTeX normally uses the Computer Modern font family. Knuth created that one with MetaFont. It includes normal (roman), slanted, italic, typewriter and bold styles as well as many combinations, and it looks quite good (as well as a bit old-fashioned). The .tfm files usually come with the LaTeX package, as they are needed for compiling. .pk files, on the other hand, are usually not included since they must be generated in all styles in all possible point sizes for all possible printer resolutions the user may have. You usually don't execute MetaFont by hand, normally an ARexx macro is called by the previewer or printer when a .pk font is missing, and it in turn calls MetaFont with the proper arguments and does all conversions and moving of files that MetaFont doesn't handle. I have included such a script. You may get severe warnings from MetaFont when you create very small sizes or in very low resolution. That probably means some rarely used characters will look ugly, nothing more. You can ignore them. What to do with the .dvi file The simplest thing is to 'typeset' it to a text file with a program like 'dvi2tty'. You get a crude image of what the text would have looked like typeset. Good in many cases; it is fast and generates a normal text file. The other thing you can do is previewing the text on the screen or printing it on a printer. Previewing is really the same as printing, only you render the picture on a screen instead of a piece of paper, and in a much lower resolution. You _really_ need to preview the document before you print it; there is almost certainly something that looks ugly which you have to change... There are lots of programs for printing .dvi files, but most only work with certain printers (mostly HP DeskJets and such). What is needed is, of course, the .dvi file, but also fonts which describe the exact shape of each character. LaTeX uses - normally - its own font format, generated by the MetaFont program. More on that later. Another alternative which many seem to use is to use a program to convert the .dvi file to a PostScript file. PostScript files can be printed directly on PostScript printers or converted yet another time with other programs (GhostView or Post.library) - provided you have the suitable PostScript fonts. I haven't tried this at all. Finally, there is a program 'dvidvi' which can apply some transformations on a .dvi file (magnification, cutting off pages etc.) I finally learned to use it; see a separate chapter below. Dvidvi This is a utility to apply changes to a ready .dvi file. You can reverse the pages, select only odd pages, magnify, or put two pages on one larger page. Together with some printer tricks, this can be used to print two or four pages on each paper side. There can be trouble with marginals though; you may have to experiment a bit to get the text centered on the page. This works for me, if I use the a4paper in the original document: dvidvi -m 2:0(-0.5,-0.5),1(5.0,-0.5) -sm -2 -sw 4 dviprint landscape printer=necP6 voffset=3cm hoffset=3cm That gives two pages per physical page. To make font generation work (smaller text needs smaller fonts) you have to edit the original Rexx script a bit (add support for negative magnification). I have already done this to my MakeTeXFont.rexx script, which I include here. LaTeX on the Amiga - requirements First, let's hope you have AmigaDOS 2.04 or a later release - but you do, don't you? I have no idea what LaTeX software works with AmigaDOS 1.2, and I have no intention to find out. [How I would have hated that attitude a few years ago, when I had my good old 1.2 A500!] Knowledge level: Much of the LaTeX work has to be done through the Shell so you can't be a Workbench-only Amiga user. You also have to be familiar with a text editor. If you're a regular user of some programming language, some C compiler for example, it helps you understand the process better. Something tells me that people that get interested in LaTeX in the first place often meet these reqirements from the start :-). Memory requirements: a bit hard to estimate, since you tell the TeX engine how much memory it may use in the configuration file. I can manage even rather complicated documents, and memory meters show a useage of about 1.7MB. Previewing also takes memory - about 900KB in my example case. It's probably a good idea to have at least 1MB 'chip' RAM. This rules out for example older A500s. Processing speed: This is a question of patience, and of course how long and/or complicated documents you have. The two things that can take time is font generation with MetaFont and the actual LaTeX compiles. The first is something you normally only need to do once, so you can let the computer run unattended for a few hours if you have a 'slow' 68000 processor. If you use a faster system, say an A1200 with 'fast' RAM, you can "grab a cup of coffee". Compiling documents can be a bigger problem - you do it often; compile - preview - correct errors - recompile ... Compiling a rather complicated, 29 a4-page document on my 68030-based Amiga takes exactly two minutes with LaTeX2e and PasTeX 1.4ß. But I'm sure lots of people could manage with a slower system if they don't use LaTeX that often. Disk space: I don't say it's impossible to work with only floppies (after all, I used to do 'impossible' things without a hard disk for many years), but you'd probably be very frustrated, especially with newer versions of LaTeX. On a hard disk, you probably need more than 5MB free space to install everything you need to work with a newer version of LaTeX; less with an older version or if you use some kind of compression (Imploder, Powerpacker [*argh*] or XPK). Other software: Some utilities need one or another well-known freely redistributable library, like reqtools.library or ixemul.library. None require MUI yet. (Thank God for that.) You need to have the (un)archiver LhA or similar to unpack the archives for the different LaTeX utilities, and possibly 'compress', 'gzip', 'tar' or 'gnutar' as well, for .Z, .tar.Z, or .tar.gz archived software you fetch from the net. If you don't have net and ftp access, some of the LaTeX files may be hard to find. But how did you find this file, then? What you need First, you need to compile the LaTeX documents. There are at least four implementations of the TeX engine: Dave Crooke's straightforward port (which needs ixemul.library), the one in Tom Rokicki's famous commercial AmigaTeX package, the one in Georg Hessman's PasTeX 1.3 or that of PasTeX 1.4ß. As far as I know, PasTeX 1.4ß is the only one that implements the last revision of the TeX engine - 3.1415. You also need the LaTeX macros. The LaTeX2.09 macros come with either PasTeX1.3, AmigaTeX or Crooke's TeX. But with a bit of extra trouble, you can get your hands on the LaTeX2e macros instead - a much improved set of macros that is meant to be the future standard. You may also want additional macro files, fonts and hyphenation tables for special purposes (like creating documents in your own native language instead of US English). If you want to do this I strongly recommend LaTeX2e - the new packages are written for it. Secondly, you need some way to preview your documents. dvi2tty, which typesets to a text file, can be nice at times, but you can't see the finer details of your document this way, and the typesetting is far from perfect - dvi2tty can lose characters here and there. A screen previewer is a must. The two I've tried is 'dvi' 3.62 by a bunch of germans, and 'ShowDVI' from the PasTeX 1.4ß distribution. I haven't tried ShowDVI from PasTeX1.3. I've found ShowDVI to be better than 'dvi'; the user interface is much nicer. You probably also want a way to get the documents onto paper. If you're lucky you can take the .dvi files to work, where you have a .dvi printing program and a high-resolution laser. If you're pretty lucky you can take it to a place with a PostScript printer. In that case, convert the .dvi file to PostScript. Normally, though, you have to make do with your own resources. On a laser printer or an ink-jet printer, the output will look professional enough, at least for people with less than perfect eyesight. DVI 3.62 has a printing option, but it seems buggy to me. Also, it is restricted to a few hardcoded printer types. DVIPrint from PasTeX1.4ß has worked better, and it uses the printer type set in your printer preferences. For printing as well as previewing, you need a whole lot of .pk files; the bitmap files containing the shapes of the characters in the different fonts. You can get .pk fonts pregenerated from Georg Hessmann, but one day you may need a certain size of say italic Computer Modern that wasn't in your package, and then you don't have it. The only reasonable thing to do is to install MetaFont alongside LaTeX. See below for descriptions and advice on installation for some packages I use. Installing LaTeX software on the Amiga The following is going to be a guide to installing the programs and packages needed to compile LaTeX documents and printing them. I'm not an expert, but I've managed to get it work most of the time, and I'll describe how I did. Hopefully you'll find it easier to do it on your system once you've seen how it was done on another. I started out using Crooke's port of the TeX engine and the DVI previewer. I've since moved to PasTeX 1.4ß with LaTeX2e. I still keep some configuration quirks from the first installation: most notably, I don't arrange the .pk file directory the PasTeX way. It works at least as well though, so I've decided to keep it. The ShowDVI and DVIPrint configuration files as well as the ARexx macros are made for this organization. Installing Dave Crooke's TeX port The archive TeX314UserKit.lha (from Aminet, if you have Internet access) is a rather simple conversion from the UNIX version of the TeX engine, made by a Scottish guy named Crooke. This archive is all you need to create .dvi files from LaTeX or PlainTeX documents. It doesn't, however, include utilities or fonts to preview or print them. This version needs the 'ixemul.library' in LIBS:. It is a library used to make porting UNIX programs easy. Many people don't like it for different reasons. There are relative straightforward instructions on installation inside the archive. What you have to do, basically, is to set the TeX: assignment, change texmemory.config slightly (see file included in this package), and run initex to create lplain.fmt. If you then rename virtex to 'latex' and lplain.fmt to 'latex.fmt', you can call latex with the simple command line latex myfile.tex otherwise you would have to go virtex &lplain.fmt myfile.tex The docs mention that you have to have a _huge_ stack size to make it work. I can't remember I had to have a stack larger than 16K. There is an errata text floating around concerning changes to the installation process. As far as I can see, that one is already integrated into the archive I used. One thing you _don't_ have to do is setting the environment variables describing for the differnet directories; they have reasonable defaults like 'TEX:fonts/' for TEXFONTS and 'TEX:pool/' for TEXPOOL. I have since moved to PasTeX. It implements a slightly newer version of TeX, and it doesn't use ixemul.library. Installing DVI 3.62 This package with the rather confusing name has one program for previewing and printing .dvi files and another for converting them into PostScript. DVI works well enough for previewing, the only problem is that the system for browsing through the text isn't very flexible. For printing, I haven't gotten it to work correctly. It seems to me it can't print documents with unnumbered titlepages, but it may also be my fault. I'm not sure. DVI has an installation script for the standard COmmodore Installer utility (available as freeware unless you already have it on your 'Install' system disk. One of the files is 'MakePKFont.rexx', placed in REXX:. It is used to call MetaFont when a font is missing. I had problems with this script. A bit into the script, it chooses a name for your screen resolution (100x100) or printer resolution (in my case 360x360). This name _must_ match a name compiled into MetaFont's format file (see below for more info)! I had to change 'OneOneZero' to 'previewer' and 'necHQ' to 'nechigh'. Case is significant. I have included my version of MakePKFont.rexx in this archive. It may or may not fit your purposes. Installing PasTeX 1.3 The classical TeX and LaTeX package for the Amiga is a five-disk set, including _everything_, except the .pk font files and MetaFont for generating them. The LaTeX macros, several different versions of initex and virtex, several additional macro files for different purposes (among others amiga.tex that lets you write national non-ASCII characters like ä,ö,è and ß directly) as well as printing and previewing tools. These five archives aren't on Aminet or the Fish disks, but people with internet access can find them on various German FTP sites, for example ftp.uni-passau.de, the city where the primary author Georg Heßmann lives. I merely used the installation notes and configuration files off this package - all the utilities I wanted were in PasTeX 1.4ß in newer versions. Installing PasTeX 1.4ß, patchlevel 6 These are newer versions of the TeX engine and the PasTeX utilities like ShowDVI and DVIPrint. This is as far as I know the only Amiga port of TeX 3.1415 (not that it matters much). It isn't really final yet (fall 1994), as Heßmann wants to fix all bugs before he does a total package of it. These are _only_ the executables and a few installation files; you'll have to go to PasTeX 1.3 for installation. This package has been released onto Aminet as of November, 1994. Both initex and virtex come in four versions; compiled for 68020-equipped Amigas (A1200 or better) or any Amiga, and BigTeX or ordinary TeX. I'd say BigTeX is really the normal TeX; the 'small' version is supposed to be faster, but it can't handle as much memory as BigTeX, it seems (some values in 'tex.cnf' cannot be set higher that 32000). The 'small' version was too small for LaTeX2e in my experience, so I'll only deal with BigTeX here. After installation, you should have a directory TeX:, holding the sub-directories: bin/ initex and virtex, showdvi, dviprint, ... This directory should be in your search path. pool/ message strings for initex/virtex config/ configuration files for the programs in TeX:bin/ formats/ precompiled .ftm file(s) inputs/ LaTeX and other macro files fonts/ .tfm font metric files pk/ .pk font bitmaps (none there yet, really) Provided you have installed the BigTeX versions of initex and virtex, you should have a file TeX:config/bigtex.cfg. In that one you both set search paths for things like macros, .tfm files and .fmt files, and the memory settings. I have included my version in this package. Notice how long the definition for TEXINPUTS is. That is because I have subdirectories in my TeX:inputs/; one for each type of LaTeX file. Also note the '.' at the start. That means the current directory is also searched for macros. Then there's the question on generating the latex format file. I haven't done this as I use LaTeX2e, which comes separately. The PasTeX 1.3 package probably makes this easy, and if it doesn't, the fifth disk in the package has ready-made format files for both LaTeX and plain old TeX. Installing LaTeX2e LaTeX2e is the newest version, of the LaTeX macros. It still uses the normal TeX executable though. It is the LaTeX everybody should use. It _can_ take old LaTeX documents - it as a compability mode - but prefers new style .tex files, which should be slightly different. You also need the TeX engine - of course - and a file with hyphenation information to create the LaTeX2e macro set and format file. 'hyphen.tex' from PasTeX will do. Basically, what you want is in CTAN's latex2e/base/ directory. LaTeX2e is strange in that the .cls and .tex and .sty files you need are imbedded in .dtx files in the distribution. In the .dtx file, the LaTeX code is intermixed with its documentation. If you run the .dtx file through latex, the documentation is typeset. To _extract_ the files, however, you have to run another file through latex - the .ins file, which is just a simple script to run docstrip.tex on the .dtx file. The problem is - docstrip is _also_ archived, as docstrip.dtx! As far as I can see, it's the same situation as if someone asks for a copy of the LhA archiver and gets it as an LhA archive. Luckily, CTAN has an 'unpacked' directory with the same files as 'base', but also the unpacked versions. I'd get that instead if I were you. There is also 'docstrip.tex', which you may need anyway to unpack other packages. Installation instructions are in 'install.txt'. They are pretty clear, although they cover installation on many different systems. Creating the format file tex:formats/latex.fmt is done by running initex on 'latex.ltx' Also rename or c:makelink virtex to latex. When you're done with that and you have the most common tex:fonts/*.tfm, LaTeX2e should work: > latex mytest.tex I may have forgotten something - it was a while since I installed it. When in doubt, read the original instructions. And use 'SnoopDOS' or a similar tool to see what files can't be opened. Installing Babel LaTeX and LaTeX2e are US-English only. There is a much used package for LaTeX2e, Babel, which can turn it into any supported lanuage Get it from CTAN (/latex2e/packages/babel/ ?) and read install.txt. You may need to run babel.ins through latex to unpack it To create LaTeX2e you had to find a US hyphenation table. You now have to find tables for the other lanuages you want to use; they aren't in Babel. Tables for most western europe languages can be found on CTAN. Edit the file 'language.dat' to fit your needs, put that and lthyphen.cfg where latex can find it (Tex:inputs, for example) Now, _rebuild_ the latex format file ('initex latex.ltx'). LaTeX will automatically find babel's files and make a slightly adjusted format file. Now, if you write a document and include the line \usepackage[swedish]{babel} and LaTeX will put 'Innehåll' instead of 'Contents' in your document, use swedish-style date format and so on. I had to increase some constants in bigtex.cfg in order to create the format file with Babel. That config file is included here. Installing 'dc' fonts However, to create true swedish documents, this isn't enough. Maybe it is for other languages, but we have the characters å, ä and ö in our alphabet as well. Because of that, the hyphenation won't work correctly. I recommend that you combine LaTeX2e and Babel with the 'dc' font set. Most MetaFont fonts only have the ASCII character set. ASCII is only 128 characters, other symbols like the math symbols are fetched from other font files. The Amiga uses the Latin-1 font encoding instead, which has 256 characters. The first 128 are the same as ASCII, but the remaining are characters used in many western europe languages: é, ñ, ö, ... MetaFont/LaTeX has a new font type called 'T1-encoded fonts' or 'Cork-encoded fonts'. They have 256 characters and interpret these almost exactly as Latin-1. There is only T1 font family I know of: dc. In practice it's the normal Computer Modern, but with ö, ä, etc added. If you have them installed and use \usepackage[swedish]{babel} \usepackage{t1enc} in your document, hyphenation will work correctly as well. Another important effect is that you can use å, ä, é etc in your documents. Get 'dc' from CTAN. The .tfm files are all there, but the .mf files that MetaFont needs (they should have names like dcr10.mf) aren't all there. There's a TeX program that is supposed to do that, but it seems to be for Plain TeX - which I don't have. So I made a shell script to generate them one by one instead. See dcstdedt.tex for which files you should generate. See dc/mf/help.eng for more information. Next problem with dc fonts is that they must be converted to .pk files if you want to view or print documents. That is of course the case with normal 'cm' fonts as well, but dc fonts needs a different MetaFont format file, dx.base, when cm fonts can manage with cm.base or even plain.base. That also means that the usual CALLMF ARexx script won't work. See my documentation on MetaFont for information on dx.base, and my ARexx script which automatically switches to dx.base. Installing MetaFont I got MetaFont 2.71 (ported by A Sherer) from AmiNet. It is said to be better that the port by S Becker on an older Fish Disk. MetaFont uses pregenerated format files, just like TeX. It comes with one ready-made, plain.base. It is enough when you create .pk files for most fonts, including the most common, cm. However, you'll have to create dx.base if you want to use 'dc' fonts. I guess I did it with: 'inimf dxbase.mf'. Calling MetaFont VirMF's user interface is rather ugly. Normally a viewing or printing program calls it automatically; when ShowDVI scans a .dvi file for example and sees that it uses dcr8 in a certain magnification, and that .pk file doesn't exist, It tries to run the ARexx script given in ENV:CALLMF. This script transforms its arguments, calls virmf with proper arguments, and finally moves the .pk file to the proper directory. It also takes care of the .tfm file (which MetaFont always creates) if there isn't already one. The only occasion where _you_ need to run MetaFont is when the .tfm file for a font is missing, so that the .tex file cannot compile. Every time ShowDVI or DVIPrint runs the script the arguments are printed to the screen. Try to mimic those values when you call the script and everything should work. I have had problems with where the file ends up. My tex:pk/ directory follows the conventions of the 'dvi' program, not PasTeX, which is the programs I use. Therefore I had to change the script a bit. I'm too tired to explain all that. And I cannot remember it all, by the way. I have enclosed all the files. Useful packages There are many packages created by different individuals to make LaTeX documents look nicer. All are on CTAN, and most only work with LaTeX2e. \documentstyle[a4paper]{article} Really a standard style option. Normally LaTeX documents are formatted to fit the US paper size. 'a4paper' is better for european usage. (Thank you, Germany, the A# paper standard is one of the few good standards you've blessed the world with ;-) \usepackage{a4wide} As the a4paper style option, but wider. Lines will be too long to read comfortably if you use this with 10-point text. \usepackage{parskip} From an obscure part of CTAN. Leaves space between paragraphs, instead of separating them by indentation. Looks much nicer in many cases. \usepackage{wasysym} Turns on symbols from the wasy-2 font. Includes symbols like male/female (not Prince R Nelson's latest, though), planets, engineering and musical notes. \usepackage{array} Enhanced 'array' and 'tabular' environments. \usepackage{longtable} Multi-page tables with many options \usepackage{amiga} If you use this one, you don't need T1 encoding to be able to use accented characters in the LaTeX documents. It won't help hyphenation, though. Found in PasTeX 1.3. \usepackage{multicol} Parts of the text in multiple columns. Letters There is a standard style for letters in LaTeX, but it is really meant to be edited by the organisation you work for; it's address and logo put in the letterhead/foot etc. I stole the one from the University of Gothenburg and edited it a bit; putting my name and address in it etc. I enclose it here as jgletter.cls, together with the skeleton for a letter. PLEASE NOTE: the first thing you must do when you install this class is to change the default address, phone number etc - I don't want _my_ name or number under _your_ letters, (and I bet you don't either). This style has its own 'swedish' option to get swedish date format together with babel, and you can supply your address in two formats. Some things you can do with LaTeX that I haven't tried yet: x Importing PostScript pictures and using them directly in LaTeX documents. x Creating hypertext documents with GNU TexInfo. x Using alternative fonts (Times, Helvetica...) x Transforming into PostScript x Use BibTeX, GloTeX, MakeIndex to automatically generate bibliographies, glossaries and indexes (indexii?). One of the most powerful things about LaTeX, when it comes to creating large reports and even books. Where to get info and stuff x The Usenet newsgroup comp.text.tex x There are a bunch of Internet sites which mirror each other much like Aminet. They are called The CTAN Archive and contain virtually all LaTeX files you may ever need, even some of the Amiga packages, like PasTeX 1.3. ftp.tex.ac.uk is one of the CTAN sites. Beware when you navigate in these archives though, since the directory hierarchies are quite large and complicated. Also, many directories have softlinked aliases. CTAN has autopacking, if you want the contents of the directory 'foo', you just type 'get foo.tar.Z', and you get the contents of foo as a compressed tar archive. I believe LhA isn't supported. x The original PasTeX 1.3 five-disk set was never on Aninet. It exists on CTAN however, but german sites like ftp.uni-passau.de have more of it. On some sites the disks may be compressed as .zom archives. Unpack with Zoom, an old Amiga disk packer. x An Amiga port of TeX and MetaFont exists on Fish disks 611-616. I haven't seen it. x The classical LaTeX book is LaTeX - A Document Preparation System Leslie Lamport Addison-Wesley 1986 ISBN 0-201-15790-X There is a much revised edition, covering LaTeX2e x Don Knuth The MetaFont Book x An archive 'LatexGuide.lha' on Aminet/text/tex is a hypertext reference of (old) LaTeX commands. Useful. installing crooke tex pastex latexe metafont dcfonts babel dvi showdvi printdvi strange utilities pictures tables psfonts special amstex hyphenation languages a4