help on latex

[Ian Malone]

Pushparaj Shetty wrote:

> On 8/2/05, Daniel Normolle wrote:
<email snipped>

> 
>>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}
>>

 >
 > The documentclass does not  support the psfig , which is essential for
 > including figures.
 > It gives the following error message:
 >
 > ! Undefined control sequence.
 > <argument> \psfig
 >
 > It worked fine in redhat 9.0.
 > Please tell me how to get the same latex as in RedHat linux 9.0.
 >
 >

I could only find <http://www.lbl.gov/ICSD/CIS/UNIX/TeX/psfig.html>,
which talks about documentstyle, so quite old.

As Mr Normolle points out 2.09 is ancient and RedHat 9 uses the same
LaTex.

\documentstyle[option,...]{type}

has been replaced by:
\documentclass{type}
\usepackage{option}
...

Is that what you're doing?  I also note that my MikTeX (Windows atm)
doesn't have psfig installed by default, nor is it in the LaTeX users
guide.  Is there any reason you can't use the graphicx package instead?
(This appears to have superseeded the graphics package mentioned in
the LaTeX user's guide 2nd edition, psfig is nowhere mentioned in that
book)

Am I misunderstanding the use of psfig? I would do:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\begin{document}
\include{somepicture} % where somepicture.eps (for latex) or
                       % somepicture.pdf (for pdflatex) exists
\include{somepicture.eps} % although pdflatex will choke
\include{somepicture.png} % etc, different formats are available
                           % depending whether you're doing latex
                           % or pdflatex
\end{document}

I'd guess from your use of it that psfig is an old package for
backwards compatibility.  Try and get hold of a copy of the 2nd
edition users guide (specifically section 7.2) and where it says
`graphics' read `graphicx'.  Otherwise I would suggest searching
on google for `latex graphicx'.

-- 
imalone