Re: A4 in LaTeX

[Colin Marquardt <colin.marquardt@gmx.de>]

* Damon Muller <damon@empire.net.au> writes:

> \documentstyle[a4]{article}

> But I get the following:

> ! LaTeX Error: File `a4.sty' not found.

If you don´t have legacy LaTeX source, you shouldn´t be using
\documentstyle! This will put you in compatibility mode to LaTeX
2.09. Nowadays, LaTeX is defined as LaTeX2e, successor of 2.09.
If you use \documentclass, you will correctly use 2e, and the
[a4paper] option will work just fine. For a start, you will want
to read the lshort2e document from CTAN, which is:

  ftp.dante.de  /tex-archive/ (Mainz, GER) aka dante.ctan.org
  ftp.tex.ac.uk /tex-archive/ (Cambridge, UK) aka cam.ctan.org
  ctan.tug.org  /tex-archive/ (Massachusetts, USA) aka tug.ctan.org

(I just see that it´s also included in slink, 
/usr/doc/texmf/latex/general/lshort2e.dvi.gz)

In general, I would mistrust any documentation older than, say 1994 or
1995. Not do they most of the time include references to LaTeX2.09,
but they also mention style files like epsfig[1], which is superseded
by the rise of the graphics package (for use of graphics in LaTeX,
read /usr/doc/texmf/latex/graphics/epslatex.ps.gz).

Cheers,
  Colin

Footnotes: 
[1]  Unfortunately, even the teTeX distribution in slink has such
     references, e.g. /usr/doc/texmf/latex/general/guide.ps.gz,
     although that already is for 2e.

-- 
Colin Marquardt <colin.marquardt@gmx.de>