Skip to content

Who's Who in the World of TeX

TeX is a great piece of software with a traditionally specific set of users: mathematicians, physicists, and computer scientists in the field all at least know what TeX is simply because it is so pervasive in that domain. TeX is a fantastic tool for their job and mentors will commonly teach their students how to use the tool to get the job done. However, newcomers to TeX are rarely – if ever – given a good education on all the different players – what goes into getting them from introduction to installation to a finished product. I hope this article will answer some of these questions you never knew you had.

From the simple to the sublime, we will cover the different aspects of what goes into a working TeX system. This should give you a pretty complete picture of this brave, new world you’ve entered into.

Engines#

Let’s start with the absolute basics. A TeX engine is a compiled program. In that sense, it is just like most of the other programs installed on your computer. This is the program that ultimately produces your finished document: in most cases, the PDF that you print or otherwise submit. This program understands only the most basic instructions related to macros and typesetting – in the lingo, these are called ‘primitives’. All documents you write will eventually boil down to these primitives to be understood and processed (or ‘compiled’) by a TeX engine. (It is of consequence to this article that all TeX engines are programmable – perhaps not strictly by choice.1)

There are many engines out there beyond Knuth’s original TeX:

  • ε-TeX (upon which most modern engines are based)
  • pdfTeX
  • LuaTeX
  • XeTeX
  • …

Each of these engines understands all of the original primitives in addition to those related to whichever extra features they may provide.

Formats#

Next up, we have formats – comprehensive programs written with TeX primitives to provide an expressive and effective user interface to TeX primitives. There are many formats out there today:

  • Plain TeX (or just ‘Plain’)
  • LaTeX
  • ConTeXt
  • …and many others.

Since nobody wants to be writing things like,

{\fam \char"4 select font cmti10\relax italic text}

TeX formats provide more meaningful ways to say the same thing:

  • {\it italic text\/} (Plain, ConTeXt)
  • \textit{italic text} (LaTeX)
  • …

These are called ‘macros’. Because TeX is programmable, these macros can become arbitrarily complex – expressing higher-level concepts like emphasis, sectioning, … even complex graphics and higher-order mathematics.

Formats define much of the syntax you use to write your document:

\documentclass{article}
\begin{document}
Hello, \textit{world!}
\end{document}

In this example, \documentclass, \begin, \textit, and \end are macros provided by LaTeX.

Extensions#

Since the community using TeX is much more diverse and specialized than any one team can hope to accommodate, the major formats define a syntax for using extensions that anyone can write and share (licenses permitting, of course). They provide additional macros that are relevant to a given task or problem.

Depending on the format, there are different ways to use these extensions and different names they go by. In LaTeX, they’re called packages. In ConTeXt, they’re called modules. These are mostly arbitrary labels – in the end, they’re all plain-text files written in TeX primitives or whatever additional support the respective format provides.

Since the formats try to be as widely-applicable as they can, you likely have seen specialized packages and modules in heavy use for your particular application:

  • \input (Plain)
  • \usepackage (LaTeX)
  • \usemodule (ConTeXt)

They represent one of the most distinctive features of TeX systems and their applicability to an impossibly diverse range of use-cases. There are thousands upon thousands of these extensions available online.

Editors#

So far, we’ve only discussed what goes into your document itself as you write it and what exactly is producing the finished product. Naturally, we need a way to use this information and actually write the document.2 Of course, as TeX uses plain-text files, you can use whatever editor you wish, but it would be foolish not to use an editor that has some level of support for writing a TeX document.3

Some popular editors include,4

  • TeXworks
  • TexMaker
  • TeXstudio
  • TeXShop
  • TeXnicCenter
  • …and many, many others.

The programmer’s editors (emacs and vi) also have first-class environments for writing with TeX – in most cases above and beyond that of any other editor, specialized or not. However, I will save that discussion for another post.

Helper Tools#

While TeX can theoretically do anything and everything you want it to do all on its own, that idea should usually stop at ‘theory’.5 There are many programs that are designed to work with TeX systems (and indeed, they’re easier to create since TeX files are plain-text). Here are just a few:

  • The BibTeX format (and the bibtex program) provide a solid foundation for style-agnostic bibliographies.
  • The BibLaTeX format (and the biber program) is a re-write of BibTeX (and bibtex) to allow much more powerful and versatile citation management than its predecessor. It also has native support for international languages.
  • makeindex automates indexing, a painful process for anyone who’s ever had to do so by hand.
  • excel2latex converts simple Excel spreadsheets into LaTeX tables.
  • latexdiff determines and mark up significant differences between LaTeX files.
  • latex-git-log generates LaTeX code to typeset version history information.

The list goes on and on. For interested parties, there is a dedicated page for such tools. If you’re a developer, you should also look into generic text-based templating engines like Liquid, XSLT, Velocity, etc.

Build tools#

Since TeX is a command-line tool at its core, most related tools also use the command-line as the ‘official’ interface. Most (if not all) specialized editors allow you to run these commands with a menu item or keyboard shortcut instead of opening up a command prompt and typing everything by hand. However, there are many TeX-specific build tools that will automatic this process and can be integrated into your editor if you wish:6

  • arara uses ‘directives’ within a TeX source file itself to record how it should be compiled.7
  • latexmk uses some clever heuristics to determine what the next phases of compilation is.
  • rubber, with its clever, hard-to-search name, is another latexmk-like program.

Of course, since these things are command-line based, classic automation tools like make and other types of generic build-management tools are available for use, too.

Distributions#

As you’ve learned, there are many things going on in the world of TeX, certainly much more than a complete beginner would think even after using TeX. That’s because large bundles of software and files called ‘distributions’ make downloading and installing a TeX system as easy as apple pie. Popular distributions include,

  • TeX Live, TUG’s own cross-platform distribution
  • MiKTeX, a Windows-only distribution
  • MacTeX, a Mac-only distribution based on TeX Live
  • proTeXt, a Windows-only distribution based on MiKTeX

All of these come with all the engines, formats, packages, and tools you’re likely to use when working with TeX. xelatex? Included. amsmath.sty? Included. arara? Included. Distributions are what you download to get started with TeX and friends.

A note for Linux users: TeX Live is available from the package repositories, but it is highly suggested you install from upstream. TeX is a very hard thing to ‘chop up’ for package repositories and it’s amazing anything can work at all, but the process is fraught with issues. It is much easier (and in the long run, more efficient) to simply download the entire TeX Live distribution from TUG’s website. Installation on Windows might’ve been tricky ten years ago, but I can vouch that it is seamless at the time of writing.

CTAN#

In the end, distributions get their files from CTAN, the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network. Distributions don’t carry everything CTAN has for practical/licensing reasons, but a huge chunk of it is included. (A standard distribution is currently around 4.5 GB.) CTAN makes sure all of these files are always available by managing a network of mirrors, or copies, that contain the entire corpus of CTAN’s materials. If something is related to TeX, you will likely find it there. Packages, package documentation, tools, formats, and engines are all hosted by CTAN’s generous mirrors.

Any files that are not available on CTAN were not uploaded by their authors. CTAN can’t make anyone upload anything, so a bit of Google-searching on the side won’t hurt anyone.

Conclusion#

While distinct from one another, each of these areas is highly dependent on the others for their success. Without CTAN, it’s likely nobody would ever find TeX on their own. Without LaTeX, TeX may well have failed in the long run. Without TeX, arara would have no reason to exist. Without editors, well, you get the idea. I wrote this article to express that these are distinct even if they work toward the same goal: document preparation. When reading, learning, and teaching TeX systems to others, it’s important for us to all use the same words. After all, TeX has survived largely by word-of-mouth recommendations and mentorship: if we start speaking different languages, how can we learn from one another?

Happy TeXing!

  1. Knuth meets the Netherlands TeX Group (NTG), page 47, second column. Donald Knuth notes “In some sense I put in many of the programming features kicking and screaming”. TeX was made Turing-complete after ‘intense’ lobbying by Guy Steele. ↩

  2. A wise man once said, “The most common mistake [for beginners] is spending too long on TeX coding and not getting the document written.”. ↩

  3. In the programming world, it’s more appropriate to call these ‘integrated development environments’ (IDEs). That is, they provide access to everything you need to write your document (except your knowledge, of course). ↩

  4. These are the official capitalizations; I promise. ↩

  5. LuaTeX is a special animal. Since it has embedded within itself a ‘proper’ (i.e. popular) programming language, Lua, most tasks can indeed be done without leaving LuaTeX. As always, use the best tools for the job. ↩

  6. mtxrun is the official way to compile ConTeXt (Mark IV) documents and is similar in concept to latexmk. I don’t think it can properly be called ‘just’ a build system; there is more going on internally. ↩

  7. I personally recommend arara – not just because I count the developer among my friends, but because it is the only TeX-specific tool I’ve found that doesn’t try to guess what you want. I know what I want, the process isn’t that complicated once you understand what’s going on, and I just want the computer to do what I tell it to do. ↩