texsis - Man Page

TeX macros for Physicists

TeXsis is a collection of TeX macros for typesetting physics documents such as papers and preprints, conference proceedings, books, theses, referee reports, letters, and memos. TeXsis macros provide automatic numbering of equations, automatic numbering and formatting of references, double column formatting, macros for making tables and figures, with or without captions, including tables with horizontal and vertical rules. TeXsis supports a wide variety of type sizes and a number of specialized document formats, and it even includes macros for making form letters for job applications or letters of recommendation.

TeXsis is an extension of "plain" TeX, so anything you know how to do in plain TeX you can do in TeXsis. TeXsis macro instructions are simply abbreviations for often used combinations of control sequences used to typeset physics documents. For more information about plain TeX see the man pages for tex(1), and/or The TeXbook, by D.E. Knuth.

TeXsis is stored as a pre-loaded format so that it loads quickly (see the man pages for initex(1), and/or "preloaded formats" in The TeXbook ). To run TeXsis simply give the command texsis in place of the tex command, i.e.

texsis [ filename ]

where filename.tex is the name of a file containing TeX and/or TeXsis \controlsequences.

TeXsis is initally in plain TeX mode, i.e. 10pt type and singlespaced, but the control sequence \texsis selects 12pt type, doublespacing, and enables other useful features. Alternatively, \paper turns on these features and sets things up to typeset a paper, \thesis does the same for typesetting a thesis, \letter is used to produce a letter using macros similar to those listed in the back of The TeXbook, \memo gives a setup for producing memoranda, and so on.

A manual which describes all of the TeXsis macro instructions is available. It is written in TeXsis, so it serves as its own example of how to write a document with TeXsis. The source code is also heavily commented, so it is possible to extract useful macros from the source code and modify them to suit your own purposes. Provisions are made for local customization of TeXsis. In particular, the file TXSmods.tex, if it exists, is read from the current directory or from the path TEXINPUTS whenever TeXsis is started. You can therefore put your own custom macros for a given project in a directory and they will automatically be loaded when TeXsis is run from that directory.

Installation

There is an appendix to the printed manual containing detailed installation instructions, but they are also provided in a form which can be processed by plain TeX, in the file Install.tex.

Diagnostics

TeXsis informational messages are written to the terminal and the log file begining with `% '. Warning and error messages begin with `> '.

Files

The source files for TeXsis and the TeXsis manual are usually installed in the same place the rest of TeX is kept. Although this may vary from intallation to installation, it will generally include a root directory named texmf. Common examples are /usr/share/texmf/, /usr/lib/teTeX/texmf, or /usr/local/lib/texmf. Filenames here are relative to this texmf root directory.

web2c/texsis.fmt: TeXsis pre-loaded format.
tex/texsis/TXS*.tex: TeXsis source code.
tex/texsis/*.txs: "Style" files which can be read in at run time for special document formats.
doc/texsis/TXS*.doc: Source for the printed TeXsis manual (written in TeXsis).
tex/texsis/TXSsite.tex: Local site customization instructions (this is read only once, when the format file is created).
tex/texsis/TXSpatch.tex: Run time patch file (like a system TeXsis.rc file, it is read every time TeXsis is run).
TXSmods.tex: Run time init file (this is read every time TeXsis is run from the current directory, or from the search path in TEXINPUTS ).

Restrictions

Please note that TeXsis is designed to be completely compatible with plain TeX. As a result it cannot be compatible with LaTeX.

Having the full manual written in TeXsis can cause a problem if you don't have a version of TeXsis already running. To get around this you can run Manual.tex through plain TeX and it will load the TeXsis files before processing the manual. This takes longer, but not by much.