TeX Catalogue (Preface Ctan Edition) Graham Williams

Welcome to The TeX Catalogue Online, Ctan Edition, listing 3,688 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.sarovar.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.

• You can Search the Catalogue and other CTAN related material, courtesy of Jim Hefferon.
• The Home Edition is a stand-alone version of the Catalogue at Sarovar.org.
• The Alphabetic Index lists the name of each entry with a link to the full entry.
• The Brief Index has a short description of each entry and a link to the full entry.
• The Topical Index provides a systematic index by topic.
• The Hierarchical Index is based on the CTAN hierarchy with links to full entries.
• The Full Catalogue, as a PDF document, is available for purchase from Togaware for a small fee to help support further development.

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 may be close to you. Multiple clicks may find alternatives. Courtesy of Randy Kobes.)

search

unsw

ufsc

switch

cstug

dante

tex

komo

roma

riken

ktug

gust

tug

Icons associated with many entries in the catalogue allow you to:

• view the directory on a nearby CTAN node
• view the directory on a nearby CTAN node
• download a zip file from a nearby CTAN node
• download a zip file from the Dante CTAN node
• jump to the package's home page
• view documentation (possibly many)
• view PDF documentation (requires acroread plugin)
• view PostScript documentation
• view DVI documentation
• view HTML documentation

Other icons simply provide further information about the package:

• available on the TeX Live CD ROM
• part of the MikTeX distribution

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 at Sarovar.

The catalogue is regularly updated and others are welcome to join the team maintaining the catalogue by creating an account on Sarovar. 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 Fairbains 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 maintains and runs 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 Fairbains 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 © 1986-2008 by Graham Williams, but is made available under the LaTeX Project Public License (lppl) License, allowing you to freely distribute it.