TeX Catalogue (Preface Ctan Edition) Graham Williams
Welcome to The TeX Catalogue Online, Ctan
Edition, listing 5,525 TeX, LaTeX, and related packages and tools.
Most are available online from CTAN, the
Comprehensive TeX Archive Network. Announcements of new packages and
updates are available as a
blog
and rss feed. For a good on-line overview of
using LaTeX see Peter Flynn's Beginner's Introduction. Visit CTAN for assistance with
installing a file.
The canonical location of the Catalogue is at texcatalogue.ctan.org while
the source of the entries (that is, without the author information that
includes emails) can be rsync
-ed from
rsync.cam.ctan.org
.
A PDF version is available from Togaware.
See the CTAN License Information Web page for information on licenses.
The TeX Catalogue Online is also available from any CTAN node or mirror, including the following. Pick one that is close to you. (The "search" link attempts to find a CTAN node that is geographically close to you. Multiple clicks may find alternatives. Courtesy of Randy Kobes.)
search |
unsw |
switch |
cstug |
dante |
tex |
roma |
ktug |
gust |
tug |
Icons associated with many entries in the catalogue allow you to:
Other icons simply provide further information about the package:
The file CTAN:README.structure describes the purpose of each top level directory.
The catalogue began life in 1986! It was originially maintained as a BibTeX database, and started generating HTML in 1992. It migrated to XML using XSL style sheets to generate the various formatted versions of the catalogue in 1997. The source migrated to the open source server Sarovar in 2004, together with a rewrite of all the processing code from XSL to Python, with much relief. The DTD for the Catalogue is in catalogue.dtd or generically here.
The catalogue is regularly updated and others are welcome to join the team maintaining the catalogue. There are bound to be errors in the catalogue. If you come across any, or have comments, enhancements, and additions, please send them to catalogue@tug.org.
The catalogue has evolved over quite a few years. Thanks to many who have contributed entries and ideas. In particular, Piet van Oostrum supplied quite a few one line descriptions and Sebastian Rahtz has added many entries for the TUG TeX Live CDROM. Robin Fairbairns and Barbara Beeton have provided various updates and suggestions. Stanislaw Wawrykiewicz maintains many of the Polish entries from GUST. Randy Kobes contributed code and ideas for the alphabetic and hierachical editions and created the extremely useful CGI script used to locate a nearby CTAN node. Jim Hefferon implemented and maintains the Catalogue search facility. Joao Palhoto Matos made the icons look great.
Juergen Fenn maintains the topical index to the Catalogue and Martin Bayer has provided a template for the improved look and feel of the catalogue.
Robin Fairbairns and the CTAN team have been active maintainers of the Catalogue, particularly as new packages are added to CTAN and other deficiencies of the Catalogue are identified.
Other sources of information about TeX and LaTeX can be obtained from the TeX Users Group.
The Catalogue is Copyright © 1986-2011 by Graham Williams, but is made available under the LaTeX Project Public License (lppl) License, allowing you to freely distribute it.