Comprehensive TeX Archive Network
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
- 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
- luatex
- Macros that require the LuaTeX engine
- plain
- Donald Knuth's example macro set and contributed material
- xetex
- Macros that require the XƎTeX engine
- 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 structures 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.
- MacTeX
- The distribution of MacTeX for Mac OS X
-
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
CTAN on the Web
The home page for CTAN is at
https://ctan.org,
which provides several features:
Searching CTAN
You can search the content of the Catalogue with the
following form on the CTAN site:
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 20M 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.
Last updated 2020-03-31