Welcome to the TeX Live CD-ROM

The TeX Live CD-ROM offers a complete TeX system for a variety of Unix, Win32, and other platforms. This encompasses programs for typesetting, previewing and printing of TeX documents, a large collection of TeX macros and extensive font libraries.

We have included on the CD-ROM a large amount of general documentation about TeX, as well as the documents that accompany specific software packages. There are numerous help files that may make starting with the software easier.

For non-Unix or Windows users, this CD-ROM includes a set of packaged TeX distributions for Macintosh and DOS.

Where to start

We suggest that you print out and read the TeX Live Guide (3rd edition) prior to undertaking the installation. The Guide provides the information necessary for using this CD-ROM and installing the system. You will find various versions of the Guide in the "doc" directory:

How to use the CD-ROM on Unix and Windows 95/NT systems

The CD-ROM can be used in the following ways:
  1. by running programs from a mounted CD; to do this, simply put the appropriate directory under bin/ on your PATH. This works on all supported Unix systems and Windows 95/NT
  2. by installing all or part of the package on a Unix system. To do this, execute the shell script install-cd.sh
  3. by installing individual elements into a running Unix TeX system. To do this, execute the shell script install-pkg.sh
  4. by installing all or part of the package on a Windows 95/NT system. To do this, run the program install.exe
Unix users will have to mount the CD using the `Rock Ridge' extensions to the ISO9660 format. Consult your system administration documents for details of how to do this, if it does not happen by default.

Windows 95 and NT users should see the full file names on the CD, as it also uses the Microsoft Joliet extensions. If you see truncated names, you cannot run programs from the CD.

How to use the CD-ROM on non-Unix or Windows 32 systems

The Mac, DOS and Windows distributions are provided in the systems directory. These distributions have been built separately; in order to undertake the installation, go to the relevant directory/folder and read the installation instructions. For example, if you want to install OzTeX, go to the systems/macintosh/OzTeX folder and follow the installation instructions in the Read-Me file.

Please note that some of the non-Unix software is shareware, which means that you are welcome to try it out before paying a small registration fee.

The documentation

Much of the documentation can be viewed online (before the TeX system is actually installed). The documents for online viewing are usually in HTML and/or PDF formats; you need to have a browser (like Netscape) for HTML documents, and the Acrobat Reader program for PDF documents, in order to view these documents. Both the browser and the AcrobatReader can print the files directly to a printer. If you do not yet have access to either a browser or PDF Reader, we've provided printable PostScript files wherever possible. Happy TeX'ing! Please send any comments or questions by email to texlive@www.tug.org


Sebastian Rahtz (s.rahtz@elsevier.co.uk)
Kaja P. Christiansen (kaja@daimi.aau.dk) Valid HTML 3.2!
March 1998