The CTAN root directory
This is the root of the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network
directory tree. Most information in CTAN is contained in
subdirectories:
- biblio
-
Systems for maintaining and presenting bibliographies within
documents typeset using TeX
- digests
-
Collections of TeX mailing list digests, TeX-related electronic
magazines, and indexes, etc., of printed publications
- dviware
-
Printer drivers and previewers, etc., for .dvi files
- fonts
-
Fonts written in Metafont, and support for using fonts from
other sources (e.g., those in Adobe Type 1 format)
- graphics
-
Systems and TeX macros for producing graphics
- help
-
FAQs (de
fr
uk)
and similar direct assistance; the catalogue
- indexing
-
Systems for maintaining and presenting indexes of documents
typeset using TeX
- info
-
Manuals and extended how-to information; errata for TeX-related
publications, collections of project (e.g., LaTeX and NTS)
documents, etc.
- install
-
ZIP files of ready-to-install CTAN packages. The package contained
in CTAN directory a/b/c/d/ appears as
install/a/b/c/d.tds.zip — each such file may be
unzipped directly into a TDS tree, and
should contain no “tree prefix”
- language
-
Support for various languages; hyphenation patterns
- macros
-
TeX macros; several directories have significant sub-trees:
- context
-
The Context distribution and contributed material
- generic
-
Macros that work in several environments
- latex
-
The LaTeX distribution and contributed material
- plain
-
Donald Knuth’s example macro set and contributed
material
- obsolete
-
Material which is now obsolete, but which needs to remain on the
archive for some reason (such as the 1992 LaTeX 2.09
distribution). The tree maintains a ‘shadow hierarchy’
— for example
obsolete/macros has the same basic
structure as macros.
- support
-
TeX support environments and the like
- systems
-
TeX systems; organised by operating environment, but also
including:
- knuth
-
Donald Knuth’s current distribution.
- generic
-
Complete systems that can potentially operate in more than one
operating environment.
- TeX Live
-
The Live collection of freely distributable TeX material,
including the TeX Live on-line
installer.
- MiKTeX
- The
distribution of MiKTeX; CTAN provides a home for MiKTeX’s
package repository, part of its online installer.
- tds
-
The TeX Directory Structure standard (the output of the TUG TDS
working group)
- usergrps
-
Information supplied by TeX User Groups
- web
-
Literate Programming tools and systems
Searching CTAN
Searching is a topic which is under active development: the CTAN
team hope to be able shortly to provide significant new tools.
The CTAN team also strongly recommend use of the TeX Catalogue Online, CTAN Edition
In addition, CTAN archives maintain lists of their contents as plain
text files, in a number of ways:
- Sorted by name
(This is a
big file…around 10M bytes).
- New or changed in the last 7
days (This is usually a more manageable size...)
This is an experimental page. Comments, to the CTAN team, will be
most welcome.
Page maintained by Robin Fairbairns.
Last updated 2009-09-14