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These are the steps necessary to convert a TeX or LaTeX document from the
original source to a readable/printable form on the OIT Unix systems. Some
of the steps detailed below will be slightly different on different Unix
platforms. Differences will be noted wherever possible.
To determine if the document is a TeX or LaTeX document, you need to examine
the first few lines. (Note: There are two versions of LaTeX; the original,
and since July 1995 the newer LaTeX2e.) All Unix TeX and LaTeX documents
should follow the naming convention of:
filename.tex
where filename is any descriptive name you wish to give the file. The
"tex" extension is the same for both TeX and LaTeX.
If the first line is one of:
Older version of LaTeX - LaTeX v.209:
/documentstyle{xxxx}
/documentstyle[yyyy]{xxxx}
or
Current version of LaTeX - LaTeX2e:
/documentclass{xxxx}
/documentclass[yyyy]{xxxx}
where xxxx will be some format of document (like "article", "report"
"book" etc.), and yyyy will be typesetting or page-format information
(like "12pt" or "twocolumn"), then you're dealing with a LaTeX document.
(Note: There is a difference in the first lines above; documents that
begin with "documentstyle" are in the older LaTeX format, those which
begin with "documentclass" are in the newer LaTeX2e format. LaTeX2e
formatters should be backwards-compatible for the older LaTeX commands.)
If the first line does NOT contain a line similar to one of the lines above,
it is a TeX document.
To use either TeX or LaTeX on the WAM or Glue systems, you must first tap
them. This sets up environment variables and adds the path to the software
for the user, simplifying the steps necessery to run many packages. To do
this, type:
tap tetex
You'll get a brief blurb on recent TeX/LaTeX announcements, like user group
info, mailing lists, package version info, etc.
To format either a TeX or LaTeX document, the general process is the same.
You first run it through the appropriate formatter which creates a DVI
(DeVice Independent) output file. This file is then converted into the
printing/viewing format which best suits your local environment; the local
favorite seems to be PostScript.
To format a TeX document, you type:
tex filename.tex
where filename is the name of your command file (with the
".tex" extension). This will create two new files, one named
filename.log and the
other named filename.dvi. The log file is just a record of the
formatting process, including any error messages needed for debugging. The
dvi file is the file containing the eventual product.
To format a LaTeX document, you type:
latex filename.tex
where filename is the name of your command file (with the ".tex" exten-
sion). This will create several new files, including filename.log,
filename.dvi, filename.aux and possibly others like
filename.toc,
etc. The log and dvi files serve the same purpose as above, the aux file
is an auxiliary log file, and other files like the toc file will have
additional information necessary for the final formatting.
At this point, how you deal with the files depends upon what platform you
are using. Some, like Xwindows, have a DVI previewer; if so, you can load
the DVI file into this for viewing/printing. To do so you can usually find
the icon for the DVI file using your file viewer and double-click on it, or
in the case of WAM and Glue, you can type:
xdvi filename.dvi
For those working in text-only windows, the next step would be to convert
the file into a format that can be dealt with. At UMCP this generally means
to convert it to PostScript format for printing. To do this, you can use
a conversion command; they're usually named "dvips" or "dvi2ps". To check
to see which is available, use the 'which' command:
which dvips
If the program exists, the full pathname will be given. It currenty lives in
the directory tree where the tex and latex commands live,
and will only be available if you run the tap tetex command shown
above.
To use the 'dvips' command, you type:
dvips filename.dvi -o
or:
dvips filename.dvi -o filename.ps
or:
dvips filename.dvi | qpr -q queue
If you use the first form, the "-o" says to put the output PostScript into
a file with the same (filename) as the DVI file. For example, if the input
DVI file were named "testfile.dvi", the resulting PostScript file would be
"testfile.ps". If you use the second form, you can rename the PostScript
file to be anything you wish. (I would suggest using the ".ps" extension
to remind you it's a PostScript file.) If you use the third form, it will
send the PostScript output directly to the printer denoted by queue.
This assumes that queue is a valid print queue on your system. (I
would suggest only doing this for a last draft, once most/all of the errors
are eliminated.)
If you use either of the first two methods above, you'll have the PostScript
version of the file in "filename.ps", but you'll still need to print it
to see what it says and how it looks. To print a PostScript file you can use
the 'qpr' command shown above:
qpr -q queue filename.ps
where queue is a valid PostScript print queue for your system.
Click here for information on WAM print
queues.
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