Chapter 7. TeX

Table of Contents
Get the files
Install TeX
The first steps with TeX
Further Reading
Summary
The typesetting engine for generating printable output from SGML and XML documents

TeX is Donald Knuth's famous typesetting software that was born from the inability of the computer systems of the early '80 to output anything that comes close to a decent mathematical text. The typesetting algorithms are derived from long-standing rules in the book printing business, and the default output looks quite different (read: more pleasant) than any word processor output. Of course everything is configurable. The primary printable output (a DVI file) is device-independent, i.e. the printed output will be the same regardless of the operating system and the printer that you may use (remember that Windows word processors shift line- and pagebreaks back and forth if you just dare to move from a 300dpi to a 600dpi printer?). Furthermore the system comes with utilities to create Postscript files (the standard print format on Unix systems) and PDF files (the inofficial standard print format of the web).

TeX is big, completely different from a word processor, and at times unwieldy for the uninitiated. If you just want to print something somehow, the SGML->RTF conversion or the XML->PDF conversion may be sufficient. If you look for highest-quality typesetting and easy conversion to platform-independent formats, you should seriously consider installing TeX.

If you have never before worked with TeX or LaTeX, there are a few things you should know:

The probably best known TeX distribution is teTeX. Cygwin ships with all the TeX binaries we need. All we have to add is a texmf tree. We can conveniently use the original teTeX archive for that purpose.

In addition to the basic TeX installation, we'll take care of two TeX extensions here which are necessary to create printable output from SGML or XML documents through TeX. JadeTeX is a macro set that complements Jade's TeX backend. xmlTeX and PassiveTeX do a similar job for the FO output of XSLT engines.

Get the files

  1. teTeX-texmf (use a nearby CTAN mirror if possible)

  2. cygtetex.diff. This will update the configuration files for later use with JadeTeX and PassiveTeX.

  3. Jadetex 3.10

  4. PassiveTeX

  5. xmltex

  6. Visit a CTAN server, e.g. ftp.dante.de, to retrieve some additional TeX-related files which are not part of the TeX distribution. This is not necessary in most cases, but if you deal a lot with foreign languages or with functional programming, you may want to have the following packages (I don't provide full links here; please use a CTAN mirror and visit the given directories):

    • tipa (International Phonetic Alphabet): CTAN:fonts/tipa

    • mmasym: Virtual TeX fonts for use with Mathematica 3.0 PostScript fonts: CTAN:fonts/psfonts/Mathematica 3.0