The TeX/LaTeX system

TeX (= tau epsilon chi, and pronounced as "tecch") is a computer language for use in mathematical typesetting, developed by D.E. Knuth from the late 1970s until the late 1980s. The main aim was to provide output with a typesetting quality that you would expect in nicely printed books. In the meantime, D.E. Knuth also developed Metafont, a tool to automatically generate nice looking (mathematical) character fonts. In the 1980s and 1990s TeX has been extended by many people, given rise for instance to LaTeX, AmsTeX and so on. Current TeX distributions usually contain all these different programs.

In order to use TeXmacs, it is assumed that you have installed a TeX system on your system, although TeXmacs really only uses the Metafont program to generate its fonts. At the moment, TeXmacs also needs the BibTeX program for generating bibliographies.

More information about the TeX system can be found at

• The Dante server, for software related to TeX.
• The TeX users group home page.
• Red hat packages for easy installation of TeX.
• The home page of Prof. Knuth.
• A brief history of TeX.