Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!cs.yale.edu!fischer-michael From: fischer-michael@cs.yale.edu (Michael Fischer) Newsgroups: comp.sys.atari.st Subject: Re: Tex/LaTeX & *.sty files.. Message-ID: <28507@cs.yale.edu> Date: 4 Feb 91 15:32:53 GMT References: <38673@cup.portal.com> Sender: news@cs.yale.edu Organization: Yale University Computer Science Dept., New Haven, CT 06520-2158 Lines: 61 Nntp-Posting-Host: ginkgo.theory.cs.yale.edu Originator: fischer@ginkgo.CS.Yale.Edu In article <38673@cup.portal.com> Yonderboy@cup.portal.com (Christopher Lee Russell) writes: >I have finally got TeX running.. Well at least it comes up and starts >giving me error messages now.. > >I got the StTeXbin.zoo file from Atari.archive. > >Firt thing I tried to do was use LaTeX to process the TeX doc files for >UniTerm 2.0e. TeX came back with an error message stating that I needed >some *.sty file to process! What's up with these *.sty files? > >And could some TeX guru fill me in on what VirTeX or LaTeX is exactly (as >related to "normal" TeX? Does anybody have any books they suggest on either >TeX or LaTeX? > > ...thanks ahead for any help... > ........yonderboy@cup.portal.com TeX is a complicated package with many distinct parts. Get someone who knows what he's doing to help you bring it up. And buy "The TeXbook" by Donald E. Knuth and the "LaTeX User's Guide & Reference Manual" by Leslie Lamport, both published by Addison-Wesley. You might also want to join the TeX users group and/or start reading the national newsgroups arpa.texhax and comp.text.tex. To answer your specific questions: IniTeX is used to turn macro packages such as LaTeX into .fmt "format" files. (The format file for LaTeX is called "lplain.fmt".) VirTeX reads format files and then processes your .tex file. Thus, LaTeX in many systems is just a shell script to run VirTeX with "&lplain" as its first argument. LaTeX uses a database of "style" files---files with .sty suffix. TeX/LaTeX also need .tfm files which describe the various fonts available. (These are generated by Metafont---see below.) VirTeX uses various environment variables to locate its files. It read its .fmt, .sty, and .tfm files while processing your .tex file and produces a "device independent" .dvi output file. .dvi files can be viewed on the screen or printed on various kinds of printers if you have the appropriate .dvi driver AND the required raster fonts ".pk" files. By themselves .dvi files are pretty useless. MetaFont is the program for generating .pk and .tfm font files from .mf files (which describe the font in an abstract way). If you have to generate your own printer or screen fonts, then you have another big job ahead of you, and you will want to buy the Metafont book, also by Knuth and available from Addison-Wesley. Hope this helps. -- ================================================== | Michael Fischer | ==================================================