Welcome to the UK List of
TeX Frequently Asked Questions

Introduction

This is a set of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) for English-speaking users of TeX.

The questions answered here cover a wide range of topics, but typesetting issues are mostly covered from the viewpoint of a LaTeX user. Some of the questions answered have little relevance to today’s users; this is inevitable — it’s easier to add information than it is to decide that information is no longer needed. The set of answered questions is therefore in a state of slow flux: new questions are answered, while old questions are deleted … but the whole process depends on the time available for FAQ maintenance.

You may use the FAQ

Licence of the FAQ

The source of the FAQ, available in the FAQ's CTAN directory, and its derived representations (currently, the HTML found at http://www.tex.ac.uk/faq and PDF copies, also in the FAQ's CTAN directory) are all placed in the public domain.

Finding the Files

Almost all files suggested in any answer in these FAQs are available from CTAN archives, and may be reached via links in the file list at the end of the answer. In particular, documentation (when available) is linked from the CTAN Catalogue entry, which is also listed in the file list.

Unless doing so is unavoidable, the answers do not mention things that are not on the CTAN archives. An obvious exception is web resources such as supplementary documents, etc.

Origins The FAQ was originated by the Committee of the UK TeX Users’ Group (UK TUG), in 1994, as a development of a regular posting to the Usenet newsgroup comp.text.tex that was maintained for some time by Bobby Bodenheimer. The first UK version was much re-arranged and corrected from the original, and little of Bodenheimer’s work now remains.