help on latex

[Daniel Normolle]

Pushparaj Shetty wrote:
> I have Fedora Core. I tried to run latex. 
> I used psfig for including figures. It gave the following mesage:
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>   New documents should use Standard LaTeX conventions and start
>  with the \documentclass command.
> 
>  Compatibility mode is UNLIKELY TO WORK with LaTeX 2.09 style
>  files that change any internal macros, especially not with
>  those that change the FONT SELECTION or OUTPUT ROUTINES.
> 
>  Therefore such style files MUST BE UPDATED to use
>           Current Standard LaTeX: LaTeX2e.
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> kindly tell me how do I get the latest version of Latex (2.09) in Fedora
> 

2e *is* the current LaTeX release.  2.09 has been obsolete for
at least a decade.  LaTeX is complaining that your .tex file
does not begin with \documentclass{article} (or some other
document class).  Check that the very first line of the .tex
file is:

\documentclass{article}

dpn