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Standard Classes in LaTeXe

This section discusses the files that come with the LaTeXe distribution and lists some of the packages which are already adapted to LaTeXe.

Files associated to LaTeXe are characterized by the extensions: name.cls for class files; name.clo for external option files; name.sty for package files name.cfg for runtime configuration files

The ``standard'' document classes distributed with LaTeXe are article, report, book, letter, slide, proc, and ltxdoc. Below, we say a few words about each one of them.

article, report, book

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they behave like the old LaTeX 2.09 styles;

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twocolumn and openbib are now internal options;

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a set of new internal options was added: a4paper, a5paper, b5paper, letterpaper, legalpaper, executivepaper, landscape.

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it behaves like the old style;

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it has a set of new internal options: a4paper, a5paper, b5paper, letterpaper, legalpaper, executivepaper.

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it behaves like the old style, but used with LaTeXe;

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it supports local font configuration by looking for sfonts.cfg;

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it has a set of new internal options: a4paper, a5paper, b5paper, letterpaper, legalpaper, executivepaper, landscape;

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the option twocolumn is not supported.

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it is no longer an option but a document class;

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it is built on the article class;

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it disallows options a5paper, b5paper, onecolumn, titlepage.

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it is used to format the LaTeXe source code;

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it is built on article and requires the doc package;

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it looks for the configuration file ltxdoc.cfg;

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it defines the commands \DocInclude and \GetFileInfo;

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it disallows the option a5paper.

Presently the following packages are available:

• ifthen, for building control structures. It provides on top of \ifthenelse and \whiledo available previously with LaTeX 2.09, the new commands \newboolean, \setboolean, and \boolean.
• makeidx, showidx, to help you make indexes.
• doc, shortvrb, for generating class and package file documentation.
• oldlfont, newlfont, for compatibility with LaTeX 2.09 and version 1 of the NFSS.
• latexsym LaTeXe no longer loads the lasy fonts by default; if needed they become available by loading this package. Note that they are not necessary when either amsfonts or amssymb is used.
• exscale allows for different math extension fonts.
• eufrak and euscript give access to the Euler fraktur and script alphabets, oldgerm to Haralambous' beautiful old German fonts, while pandora allows you to use Billawala's Pandora font family.
• syntonly will make LaTeX only check the syntax of your document, while tracefnt, with its various options errorshow, warningshow, infoshow, and debugshow, allows you to trace NFSS as LaTeX processes your document.
• varioref provides a way to automatically adapt the text of a reference, depending on the position of the \label.

Many other packages on CTAN already work with LaTeXe or will soon be converted. In the first category one finds a4, epsfig, exams, labels, layout, the NTG document class family artikel1, rapport3, etc., subeqnarray, psnfss, textfit, while the latter contains the babel collection, changebar, ltugboat and friends, the ``Mainz'' packages array, ftnright, multicol, theorem, verbatim, and supertabular.