20.1.2 TeX Mode

TeX is a powerful text formatter written by Donald Knuth; like GNU Emacs, it is free. LaTeX is a simplified input format for TeX, implemented by TeX macros. It is part of TeX.

Emacs has a special TeX mode for editing TeX input files. It provides facilities for checking the balance of delimiters and for invoking TeX on all or part of the file.

TeX mode has two variants, Plain TeX mode and LaTeX mode, which are two distinct major modes that differ only slightly. These modes are designed for editing the two different input formats. The command M-x tex-mode looks at the contents of a buffer to determine whether it appears to be LaTeX input or not; it then selects the appropriate mode. If it can’t tell which is right (e.g., the buffer is empty), the variable tex-default-mode controls which mode is used.

The commands M-x plain-tex-mode and M-x latex-mode explicitly select one of the variants of TeX mode. Use these commands when M-x tex-mode does not guess right.

TeX for Unix systems can be obtained from the University of Washington for a distribution fee.

To order a full distribution, send $140.00 for a 1/2 inch 9-track tape, $165.00 for two 4-track 1/4 inch cartridge tapes (foreign sites $150.00, for 1/2 inch, $175.00 for 1/4 inch, to cover the extra postage) payable to the University of Washington to:

The Director
Northwest Computer Support Group,  DW-10
University of Washington
Seattle, Washington 98195

Purchase orders are acceptable, but there is an extra charge of $10.00 to pay for processing charges. (The total cost comes to $150 for domestic sites, $175 for foreign sites).

The normal distribution is a tar tape, blocked 20, 1600 bpi, on an industry standard 2400 foot half-inch reel. The physical format for the 1/4 inch streamer cartridges uses QIC-11, 8000 bpi, 4-track serpentine recording for the SUN. Also, SystemV tapes can be written in cpio format, blocked 5120 bytes, ASCII headers.