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This document describes the main features of the TEX Live software distribution — TEX and related programs for GNU/Linux and other Unix flavors, Mac OS X, and Windows systems.
You may have acquired TEX Live by downloading, or on the TEX Collection DVD, which TEX usergroups distribute among their members. Section 2.1 briefly describes the contents of this DVD. Both TEX Live and the TEX Collection are cooperative efforts by the TEX user groups. This document mainly describes TEX Live itself.
TEX Live includes executables for TEX, LaTeX2e, ConTEXt, Metafont, MetaPost, BibTeX and many other programs; an extensive collection of macros, fonts and documentation; and support for typesetting in many different scripts from around the world.
TEX Live packages are regularly updated from CTAN: http://www.ctan.org.
For a brief summary of the major changes in this edition of TEX Live, see the end of the document, section 10 (p. 75).
TEX Live contains binaries for many Unix-based architectures, including Mac OS X. The included sources should enable installation on platforms for which we do not have binaries.
As to Windows: only Windows 2000 and later are supported. Windows 9x, ME and NT have been dropped. Because of this change, Windows requires much less special treatment compared to the Unix systems. There are no 64-bit executables for Windows, but the 32-bit executables should run on 64-bit systems.
See section 2.1 for alternate solutions for Windows and Mac OS X.
You can install TEX Live either from DVD or over the Internet. The net installer itself is small, and downloads everything requested from the Internet. The net installer is an attractive option if you need only a fraction of the complete TEX Live.
The DVD installer lets you install to a local disk, but you can also run TEX Live directly from the DVD (or from a DVD image, if your system supports that).
This is described in the installation sections following, but here is a quick start:
The TEX community is both active and friendly, and most serious questions end up getting answered. However, the support is informal, done by volunteers and casual readers, so it’s especially important that you do your homework before asking. (If you prefer guaranteed commercial support, you can forego TEX Live completely and purchase a vendor’s system; http://tug.org/interest.html#vendors has a list.)
Here is a list of resources, approximately in the order we recommend using them:
The other side of the coin is helping others who have questions. Both comp.text.tex and texhax are open to anyone, so feel free to join, start reading, and help out where you can.
This section describes the contents of TEX Live and the TEX Collection of which it is a part.
The TEX Collection DVD comprises the following:
CTAN, protext, and texmf-extra do not necessarily follow the same copying conditions as TEX Live, so be careful when redistributing or modifying.
Here is a brief listing and description of the top level directories in the TEX Live distribution. On the live DVD, the entire TEX Live hierarchy is in a subdirectory texlive, not at the top level of the disc.
The TEX system programs, arranged by platform.
Web pages with a quick introduction and useful links, in various languages.
The source to all included programs, including the main Web2C TEX and Metafont distributions.
Various auxiliary packages and programs. These are not installed automatically. This includes assorted editors and TEX shells.
See TEXMFMAIN below.
See TEXMFDIST below.
Tree for self-contained pure documentation, arranged by language.
Scripts, programs and data for managing the installation. It also contains private copies of Perl and Ghostscript for Windows, which are invisible outside TEX Live, and a new Windows PostScript viewer PSView.
In addition to the directories above, the installation scripts and README files (in various languages) are at the top level of the distribution.
The texmf-doc directory contains documentation which does not belong to any particular package or program. The documentation for the programs (manuals, man pages, Info files) is in texmf/doc. The documentation for TEX packages and formats is in texmf-dist/doc. You can use the texdoc or texdoctk programs to find any documentation wherever it is located. The comprehensive links in the top-level file doc.html may also be helpful.
This TEX Live documentation itself is in texmf-doc and is available in several languages:
This section lists all predefined variables specifying the texmf trees used by the system, and their intended purpose, and the default layout of a TEX Live system. The command texconfig conf shows you the values of these variables, so that you can easily find out how they map to directory names in your installation.
The tree which holds vital parts of the system such as helper scripts (e.g., web2c/mktexdir) and other support files and their documentation. Does not include TEX formats and packages.
The tree which holds the main set of macro packages, fonts, etc., as originally distributed.
The tree which administrators can use for system-wide installation of additional or updated macros, fonts, etc.
The tree which users can use for their own individual installations of additional or updated macros, fonts, etc. The expansion of this variable dynamically adjusts for each user to their own individual directory.
The tree used by the utilities texconfig, updmap, and fmtutil to store modified configuration data. Under TEXMFHOME by default.
The tree used by the utilities texconfig-sys, updmap-sys, and fmtutil-sys to store modified configuration data.
The tree used by texconfig, updmap and fmtutil to store (cached) runtime data such as format files and generated map files. Under TEXMFHOME by default.
The tree used by texconfig-sys, updmap-sys and fmtutil-sys, and also by tlmgr, to store (cached) runtime data such as format files and generated map files.
The default layout is:
A previous release.
The current release.
GNU/Linux binaries
Mac OS X binaries
Windows binaries
This is TEXMFMAIN.
TEXMFDIST
TEXMFDOC
TEXMFSYSVAR
TEXMFSYSCONFIG
TEXMFLOCAL, intended to be retained from release to release.
Privately generated and configuration data for a previous release.
Privately generated and configuration data for the current release.
TEXMFVAR
TEXMFCONFIG
TEXMFHOME Personal macros. etc.
TEX itself is frozen, apart from rare bug fixes. It is still present in TEX Live as the program tex, and will remain so in the foreseeable future. TEX Live contains several extended versions of TEX:
Here are a few other commonly-used programs included in TEX Live:
bibliography support.
index support.
convert DVI to PostScript.
DVI previewer for the X Window System.
DVI drive for the HP LaserJet family.
convert DVI to/from plain text.
cut and paste pages from DVI files.
convert DVI to PDF, an alternative approach to pdfTEX (mentioned above). See the ps4pdf and pdftricks packages for still more alternatives.
PostScript utilities.
LATEX syntax checker.
ConTEXt and PDF processor.
TEX to HTML (and XML and more) converter.
TEX Live comes with many high-quality scalable fonts. See http://tug.org/fonts and texmf-doc/doc/english/free-math-font-survey.
To start with, get the TEX Collection DVD or download the TEX Live net installer, and locate the installer script: install-tl for Unix, install-tl.bat for Windows.
The following sections explain in more detail.
Below, > denotes the shell prompt; user input is bold. Starting in a terminal window on a Unix-compatible system, the simplest way:
To install in GUI mode (you’ll need the Perl/TK module), use:
For a complete listing of the various options:
Warning about Unix permissions: Your umask at the time of installation will be respected by the TEX Live installer. Therefore, if you want your installation to be usable by users other than you, make sure your setting is sufficiently permissive, for instance, umask 002. For more information about umask, consult your system documentation.
As mentioned in section 2.1, a separate distribution is prepared for Mac OS X, named MacTEX (http://tug.org/mactex). We recommend using the native MacTEX installer instead of the TEX Live installer on Mac OS X, because the native installer can make a few Mac-specific adjustments, in particular to allow easily switching between the various TEX distributions for Mac OS X (MacTEX, gwTEX, Fink, MacPorts, …).
MacTEX is firmly based on TEX Live, and the main TEX trees are precisely the same. It does add a few extra folders with Mac-specific documentation and applications.
If you are using the net installer, or the DVD installer failed to start automatically, double-click install-tl.bat.
You can also start the installer from the command-prompt. Below, > denotes the prompt; user input is bold. If you are in the installer directory, run just:
Or you can invoke it with an absolute location, such as:
To install in text mode, use:
For a complete listing of the various options:
Figure 1 displays the main text mode screen under Unix.
This is only a command-line installer; there is no cursor support at all. For instance, you cannot tab around checkboxes or input fields. You just type something (case-sensitive) at the prompt and press the Enter key, and then the entire terminal screen will be rewritten, with adjusted content.
The text installer interface is this primitive for a reason: it is designed to run on as many platforms as possible, even with a very barebones Perl (for Windows, a Perl subset is included).
Figure 2 displays the graphical installer under Windows. Most differences in available options are due to this screenshot being from Windows, and the previous text screen being from GNU/Linux.
The installer is intended to be mostly self-explanatory. Still, a few quick notes about the various options and submenus:
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Available sets of binaries:
=============================================================================== a [ ] alpha-linux DEC Alpha with GNU/Linux b [ ] amd64-freebsd x86_64 with FreeBSD c [ ] hppa-hpux HP-UX d [ ] i386-freebsd Intel x86 with FreeBSD e [X] i386-linux Intel x86 with GNU/Linux f [ ] i386-openbsd Intel x86 with OpenBSD g [ ] i386-solaris Intel x86 with Sun Solaris h [ ] mips-irix SGI IRIX i [ ] powerpc-aix PowerPC with AIX j [ ] powerpc-linux PowerPC with GNU/Linux k [ ] sparc-linux Sparc with GNU/Linux l [ ] sparc-solaris Sparc with Solaris m [ ] universal-darwin universal binaries for MacOSX/Darwin o [ ] win32 Windows p [ ] x86_64-linux x86_64 with GNU/Linux
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Figure 3 displays the text mode binaries menu. By default, only the binaries for your current platform will be installed. From this menu, you can select installation of binaries for other architectures as well. This can be useful if you are sharing a TEX tree across a network of heterogenous machines, or for a dual-boot system.
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Select a scheme:
=============================================================================== a [ ] TeX Live basic scheme b [ ] TeX Live scheme for ConTeXt c [X] TeX Live full scheme d [ ] GUST TeX Live scheme e [ ] GUTenberg TeX Live scheme f [ ] TeX Live medium scheme g [ ] TeX Live minimal scheme h [ ] TeX Live for Omega users i [ ] teTeX scheme j [ ] XML typesetting scheme
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Figure 4 displays the TEX Live scheme menu; from here, you choose a “scheme”, which is an overall set of package collections. The default full scheme installs everything available, but you can also choose the basic scheme for a small system, minimal for testing purposes, and medium or teTeX to get something in between. There are also various specialized and country-specific schemes.
You can refine your scheme selection with the ‘standard collections’ and ‘language collections’ menus (figure 5, shown in GUI mode for a change).
Collections are one level more detailed than schemes — in essence, a scheme consists of several collections, a collection consists of one or more packages, and a package (the lowest level grouping in TEX Live) contains the actual TEX macro files, font files, and so on.
If you want more control than the collection menus provide, you can use the tlmgr program after installation (see section 6); using that, you can control the installation at the package level.
The default layout is described in section 2.3, p. 8. The default location of TEXDIR is different between Windows (%PROGRAMFILES%\texlive\2008) and Unix (/usr/local/texlive/2008).
The main reason to change this default is if you lack write permission for the default location. You don’t have to be root or adminstrator to install TEX Live, but you do need write access to the target directory.
A logical alternate choice is a directory under your home directory, especially if you will be the sole user. Use ‘~’ to indicate this, as in ‘~/texlive/2008’.
We recommend including the year in the name, to enable keeping different releases of TEX Live side by side. (You may wish to make a version-independent name such as /usr/local/texlive-cur via a symbolic link, which you can then update after testing the new release.)
Changing TEXDIR in the installer will also change TEXMFLOCAL, TEXMFSYSVAR and TEXMFSYSCONFIG.
TEXMFHOME is the recommended location for personal macro files or packages. The default value is ~/texmf. In contrast to TEXDIR, here a ~ is preserved in the newly-written configuration files, since it usefully refers to the home directory of each individual running TEX. It expands to $HOME on Unix and %USERPROFILE% on Windows.
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<P> use letter size instead of A4 by default: [ ]
<F> create all format files: [X] <D> install font/macro doc tree: [X] <S> install font/macro source tree: [X] <L> create symlinks in standard directories: [ ] binaries to: manpages to: info to:
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Figure 6 displays the text mode options menu. Three of the options here need mentioning:
Now when all these settings are to your liking, you can type ‘I’ to start the installation process. When it is done, skip to section 3.4 to read what else needs to be done, if anything.
Type ‘V’ to select this option. This changes the main menu into something like figure 7.
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======================> TeX Live installation procedure <=====================
=======> Note: Letters/digits in <angle brackets> indicate menu items <======= =======> for commands or configurable options <======= <D> directories: TEXDIRW (Writable root): !! default location: /usr/local/texlive/2008 !! is not writable, please select a different one! TEXMFLOCAL (directory for site-wide local files): /usr/local/texlive/texmf-local TEXMFSYSVAR (directory for variable and automatically generated data): /usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-var TEXMFSYSCONFIG (directory for local config): /usr/local/texlive/2008/texmf-config TEXMFHOME (directory for user-specific files): ~/texmf <O> options: [ ] use letter size instead of A4 by default [X] create all format files <V> set up for installing to hard disk Other actions: <I> start installation for running from DVD <H> help |
