TeX, LaTeX and Friends Out of Beta

The community-driven L^aT_eX-specific Q&A site: T_eX, L^aT_eX and Friends is now out of beta and has a new design. I’m most pleased to see the Tengwar Ring-lore in the top left corner! :-D

New (La)TeX Q&A Site

I’m sure many people have looked up Stack Overflow for programming-related Q&A. Well there’s now a similar community-driven L^aT_eX-specific Q&A site: T_eX, L^aT_eX and Friends. Here’ a short snippet from the site FAQ (my own emphasis):

What kind of questions can I ask here?

TeX - LaTeX - Stack Exchange is for expert users of TeX, LaTeX and other related typesetting systems. Please do look around to see if your question has already been asked (and maybe even answered!) before you ask.

What kind of questions should I not ask here?

Avoid asking questions that are subjective, argumentative, or require extended discussion. This is not a discussion board, this is a place for questions that can be answered!

After just 7 days in private beta, the site has 323 users and 658 answers to 242 questions. With many (L^a)T_eX experts already onboard answering questions, this is definitely one for the bookmarks (especially if you still can’t get used to comp.text.tex!)

Using the TeX FAQ

The (English language) TeX FAQ is a real treasure trove, maintained by the amazing Robin Fairbairns, who also co-maintains CTAN. (Yep, that repository of all contributed TeX & friends packages!!)

I would say 80% of the time, a LaTeX user can find a solution or pointers to a question in the FAQ, so the next time you're tempted to hack your own solution or is frustrated by all the old, obsolete advices churned up by Google, try searching in the TeX FAQ first.

In fact, you might even have a local copy on your LaTeX installation. Here's how to access them:

• On TeXLive, run texdoc faq-en at the CLI.
• On MiKTeX, run mthelp --view faq-en at a DOS prompt, or in the Windows Start → Run dialog.

Another alternative is via the Visual FAQ. Run texdoc visualfaq (or mthelp --view visualfaq). Browse through the PDF and click on an element which effect you're trying to replicate; you will be directed to the relevant entry in the online TeX FAQ.