SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

This manual page is not meant to be exhaustive. The complete documentation for this version of TeX can be found in the info file or manual Web2C: A TeX implementation.

The LaTeX language is described in the book LaTeX - A Document Preparation System. LaTeX is a TeX macro package, not a modification to the TeX source program, so all the capabilities described in tex(1) are present.

The LaTeX macros encourage writers to think about the content of their documents, rather than the form. The ideal, very difficult to realize, is to have no formatting commands (like ``switch to italic'' or ``skip 2 picas'') in the document at all; instead, everything is done by specific markup instructions: ``emphasize'', ``start a section''.

The primary source of documentation for LaTeX is the LaTeX manual referenced below, and the local guide in the file local-guide.tex or local.tex or some such.

pdflatex, lualatex, and xelatex, are LaTeX formats based on the respective engines. All output PDF by default.
lambed is the Aleph-based LaTeX format (DVI output).

On some systems latex209 and slitex are available for compatibility with older versions of LaTeX. These should not be used for new texts.