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Search | Home | Alpha | Brief | Topical | Hierarchical | Full

by Graham Williams

CTAN Edition

Welcome to The TeX Catalogue Online, CTAN Edition, listing over 1500 TeX, LaTeX, and related packages and tools. Most are available online from CTAN, the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network. For a good on-line overview of using LaTeX see Peter Flynn's Beginner's Introduction.

- 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.
- The Alphabetic Index (80K) lists the name of each entry with a link to the full entry.
- The Brief Index (300K) has a short description of each entry and a link to the full entry.
- The Topical Index (80K) provides a systematic index by topic.
- The Hierarchical Index (200K) is based on the CTAN hierarchy with links to full entries.
- The Full Catalogue (1.5MB) is the complete catalogue as a single file.

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 | aarnet | switch | cstug | dante | loria | tex | roma | riken | gust | rge | tug

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

- view the directory on the local CTAN node
- view documentation (possibly many)
- view documentation in PDF format (requires acroread plugin)
- jump to the package's home page
- download a gzip'd tar file from a nearby CTAN node

Other icons simply provide further information about the package:

- available on the TeX Live CD ROM
- part of the teTeX distribution
- 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. Individual entries for the Catalogue are maintained in CTAN:help/Catalogue/entries. A single XML catalogue is available from here. The appropriate DTD is in catalogue.dtd or generically at my Home Web.

The catalogue is regularly updated. There are bound to be errors in the catalogue. If you come across any, or have comments, enhancements, and additions, please send them to me at Graham.Williams@csiro.au. Currently the Catalogue entries are maintained manually by me through email requests. A Web page is being set up to allow authors to update their Catalogue entries as they submit to CTAN.

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.

Juergen Fenn maintains the topical index to the cataogue and Martin Bayer has provided a template for the improved look and feel of the catalogue.

Other sources of information about TeX and LaTeX can be obtained from the TeX Users Group.