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Florida State University Computer Science Department

Information about TeX and LaTeX

Table of Contents

Typesetting

The Computer Science Department has "TeX, C Version 3.14t3" and "LaTeX Version 2.09 <25 March 1992>" available to its graduate students and faculty. TeX is a typesetting lan- gauge which is used to generate high-quality manuscripts. LaTeX is a special version of TeX which allows the user to concentrate more on the structure of text and less on the often complicated typesetting commands often associated with TeX. However, some of the flexability available in pure TeX is lost. There is a paper located in /usr/local/doc (currently accesible only on the SPARC's) which contains TeX-gentle_intro.ps, a gentle introduction for the novice user on the power of TeX. It can be read using a PostScript previewer (see below). Also see the tex and latex man pages for additional information.

Good reference books include The The TeXbook by Donald Knuth and LaTeX: A Document Preparation System by Leslie Lamport. Each of these books can be found in the FSU Bookstore.

Look in /usr/local/lib/tex/inputs for a list of possible sty files (for LaTeX) and tex files (mostly for TeX) which pro- vide additional functions.

Including PostScript in TeX

Users often wish to incorporate figures into their papers. If the figures to be included can be converted to Encapsu- lated PostScript, they can easily be included into a TeX or LaTeX document. It is suggested that you use the Psfig/TeX style file (psfig.sty). The documentation for Psfig/Tex (psfig-doc.ps) can be found in /usr/local/doc. You may pre- view it using the PostScript previewing software (see below). You must use dvips to convert your DVI file to PostScript.

Previewing

TeX and LaTeX produce DVI files which can be previewed under X-Windows or SunView. Since SunView is no longer supported, we advised you to use X-Windows. See the xdvi man pages for details. However, for those who still insist on using Sun- View, you can preview DVI files with dvipage. One advantage to using xdvi is that it creates fonts required for preview- ing when they do not already exist. Dvipage does not posses this feature and has to substitute for the missing fonts.

Under X-Windows you also have the ability to preview PostScript files using Ghostscript or Ghostview. See how to convert DVI files to PostScript in the next section.

Ghostscript defaults to a simple front-end to X-Windows for quick previewing, while Ghostview is an X11 interface to the Ghostscript interpreter with windows and buttons. Some of the features of Ghostview include viewing under different resolution and the ability to print specific pages of a document. See the gs man pages for Ghostscript, and ghost- view man pages for Ghostview.

Converting to PostScript

To convert DVI files to PostScript, use the dvips command. See the dvips man pages, type dvips without any arguments for a list of possible options, and preview /usr/local/doc/dvips.ps (using gs or ghostview) for more information on using dvips.

Conversion Examples

To create texfile.ps from texfile.dvi, simply type:

dvips texfile.dvi

The .dvi from texfile.dvi may be omitted. To convert specific pages of a DVI file to PostScript, use -p to specify the beginning page number and -l for the last. The following example will convert pages 20 through 25 of texfile.dvi to a file called texfilepg20-25.ps.

dvips -p 20 -l 25 -o texfilepg20-25.ps texfile

Offset Fix

Many TeX users have included a 1-inch by 1-inch offset in their TeX files to compensate for the lack of an offset on the old Imagen printers. For consistency, a negative offset was used on the PostScript printers to remove the initial offset. You should eliminate these offsets from your TeX files since we no longer support the negative offset feature in the lpr -d texfile.dvi command.

If you want to convert a DVI file to PostScript which was created using the old offset method, you will have to remove the offset by typing:

dvips -O -1in,-1in texfile.dvi

Printing

Once you are satisfied with the PostScript output observed with a previewer, you may print the PostScript file. To do so, simply type:

lpr -Pps texfile.ps

If you have created a DVI file without the offsets, you can print the file without converting it to PostScript (this is done by the lpr command) by typing:

lpr -Pps -d texfile.dvi

See also

man tex(1), latex(1), gs(n), ghostview(n), lpr(1), slitex(1), bibtex(1)


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