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
- 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)
- tools
-
Tools of use for the archive maintainers (including mirrors of
the source of the compression tools the archives use)
- usergrps
-
Information supplied by TeX User Groups
- web
-
Literate Programming tools and systems
In addition, there are two ‘shadow hierarchies’.
Each of these
maintains the same structure as the main tree -- for example,
nonfree/systems has the same basic
structure as systems,
obsolete/macros has the same basic
structure as macros.
- nonfree
-
The tree was designed for material which is not freely-usable
(shareware, or of restricted usage, such as no-commercial or
no-military use, or may not be included in commercial
distributions). Users of the archive should check that they are
entitled to use material downloaded from the nonfree/ tree.
Note that the nonfree/ tree is now deprecated (in
favour of more detailed licence information in the CTAN catalogue);
no new material is being added to the tree, and packages are slowly
being returned to the main tree, as time permits.
- 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 nonfree/ shadow hierarchy is represented in parallel (by
Un*x-style ‘soft links’ in the main (or occasionally the
obsolete) hierarchy; the FILES.* files only list instances of such
items in the nonfree/ hierarchy.
Searching CTAN
Searching is a topic which is under active development: the CTAN
team hope to be able shortly to provide significant new tools. In
the interim, we can offer Jim Hefferon’s CTAN Search page (note: this
page sets a cookie to record what you believe to be your best CTAN
mirror).
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
(These are
big files...around 4M 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 2008-08-31