A LaTeX2e reference manual - latexrefman

The current manual:

• English: - docbook - dvi - html (one page) - html (split) - info - pdf - plain text - latex2e.texi source (en).
• Spanish (es): - docbook/es - dvi/es - html/es - info/es - pdf/es - plain text/es - latex2e-es.texi source (es).
• French (fr): - docbook/fr - dvi/fr - html/fr (one page) - html/fr (split) - info/fr - pdf/fr - plain text/fr - latex2e-fr.texi source (fr).
• Subversion repository for all source files (repo info); general project page.
• The current release of the English version, on CTAN (the package name on CTAN and in distributions is latex2e-help-texinfo, for historical reasons).
• The current release of the French version, on CTAN (the package name on CTAN and in distributions is latex2e-help-texinfo-fr).
• How to mirror the manual.

Goal and rationale

The goal is to update and amplify the long-existing unofficial LaTeX(2e) reference manual, which has been included in free TeX distributions for many years. It originated with George Greenwade, was updated for LaTeX 2.09 by Stephen Gilmore, and for LaTeX2e by Torsten Martinsen. None of these folks can continue work on the project. The current maintainers are Vincent Belaïche and Jim Hefferon.

The goal is not to replace the major published books about LaTeX; that would not be realistic. What is feasible, and what we intend, is to summarize the features (commands, environments, options, etc.) of core LaTeX2e. This information is available in the free LaTeX sources and documentation, but searching out all the pieces is not especially easy.

This manual is written in Texinfo, since that provides an easy path to both HTML and PDF. However, we are happy to accept new material in plain text, LaTeX, Docbook, or whatever format (we will integrate it into the Texinfo source). Patches made with diff -u are ideal, and with a ChangeLog entry is even more ideal, but we'll take anything.

Translations

The document is currently available in French, thanks to Vincent Belaïche, and in Spanish, thanks to Nacho Pacheco. A new maintainer for the Spanish is needed. Translations to additional languages would also be most welcome.

Contributions wanted

Reading through the document will turn up plenty of desirable improvements. There is lots to do: not all the commands introduced in LaTeX2e are present yet, default values are often missing, etc. Searching for xx in the (sole) source file latex2e.texi will show some of the areas that need work. More information is on our contributions guidelines page.

Mailing lists

Please email contributions or anything else to latexrefman@tug.org (subscribe, archive). Any bug reports, suggestions, or discussion of whatever sort are welcome there.

The other mailing list is latexrefman-commits@tug.org (subscribe, archive). It gets a message for each commit to the Subversion repository (and no other traffic).

License

The license is the old-style GNU documentation license (“Permission is granted …”). This is because that is how the document was originally released, and one of the authors is deceased. It is a free documentation license, compatible with most any other reasonable license.

Thanks to puszcza.gnu.org.ua for hosting this latexrefman project.