- General documentation
- Hook management
- Page mark management
- Typesetting mathematics
- Japanese translations
- Summary of changes by release
- Source code documentation
- German
- French
Documentation distributed with LaTeX
General documentation
A short introduction to newer features of LaTeX is given in the following document:
The original guide describing commands introduced with LaTeX2e in 1994 (with some focus on the differences between the old LaTeX 2.09 and current standard LaTeX2e) is available as well. It remains relevant because the commands introduced between 1994 and 2020 are not included in the previous document:
For more extensive introductory documentation take a look at the links to contributed documentation that have their own page.
More advanced documentation about core LaTeX, which is available via the net includes:
- LaTeX2e for class and package writers — current version
- LaTeX2e for class and package writers — historic version (the original document with updates until 2020 with more focus on changes between LaTeX 2.09 and LaTeX2e)
- LaTeX2e font selection
- LaTeX2e font encodings
- Cyrillic languages support in LaTeX
- Configuration options for LaTeX2e
- Modifying LaTeX
- The LaTeX3 Project
The LaTeX3 programming layer (which is part of the LaTeX format) is documented in
Documentation of the new hook management
The hook management introduced in 2020 is largely intended for package developers. However, most of the available hooks can also be useful for document authors. The documentation is currently split across several documents:
- Overview of LaTeX’s hook management and core hooks — lthooks-doc.pdf
- Generic hooks for document-level commands — ltcmdhooks-doc.pdf
- Hooks available when reading files — ltfilehook-doc.pdf
- Hooks available when writing pages — ltshipout-doc.pdf (e.g., for background pictures, etc.)
- Hooks available when processing paragraphs — ltpara-doc.pdf
Documentation of the new mark mechanism
The new mark mechanism introduced in 2022 offers arbitrary many independent marks and resolves the issues with LaTeX legacy marks (available through \markbox and \markright ). The old mechanism remains available so that classes using it continue to work without any updates.
Typesetting complex mathematics
Specifically targeting the typesetting of mathematics is:
Japanese translations of documentation
Yukitoshi FUJIMURA kindly translated two of the above documents to the Japanese language. These are
- 著者のための LaTeX 2e (LaTeX2e for authors) [source]
- amsmath パッケージユーザガイド（Version2.1） (User’s Guide for the amsmath Package) [source]
He also provided a translation of “Short Math Guide for LaTeX” distributed and maintained by the American Mathematical Society (AMS):
- はやわかり LaTeX で数式組版 (Short Math Guide for LaTeX) [source]
Quick summary of changes by release
Changes made to the LaTeX kernel or to core packages maintained by the LaTeX team are discussed in some detail in the LaTeX News Newsletters that come as part of each release.
A document with all available issues bundled together in their historical order is ltnews.pdf .
Source code documentation
The full documentation of the source code with all commands and their implementation can be obtained by processing source2e.tex distributed as part of the LaTeX2e distribution. A compiled version (from the current release) with a list of all major changes and an index of all commands and their usage within the kernel is
- The LaTeX2e Sources (1000+ pages)
- The L3 programming layer sources (1000+ pages)
As a companion document Martin Scharrer compiled a useful reference list with links back into the 2e source document if both are stored in the same directory:
For the implementation of the standard classes article , report , and book there also exists a document that contains the complete sources with commentary:
In 2015 we introduced a roll-back/roll-forward functionality by which it becomes possible to reset the kernel code (though not external packages at this stage) to the behavior that it had on a particular date. This can be useful when processing older documents. It is documented here:
Other non-english documentation
There is a lot of documentation in languages other than English. Lists of books and other resources in other languages are maintained by TeX user groups in the respective countries. The following are known to us:
German
French
- French LaTeX documentation maintained by the Francophone TeX Users Group GUTenberg
- Tout ce que vous avez toujours voulu savoir sur LaTeX
- A collection of french LaTeX documentation maintained by Framasoft
- Apprends LaTeX!
LaTeX Books
List of books on LaTeX in English, French, German, and Spanish.
Useful Links
Links to contributed documentation, tutorials, videos, communities, etc.
Getting LaTeX
Get LaTeX for Linux, Mac OS X, Windows and Online.
LaTeX logoLaTeX is a document preparation system used for the communication and publication of scientific documents. LaTeX is free software and is distributed under the LaTeX Project Public License.
