[Tugindia] help with installing packages from ctan

[Duvvuri Venu Gopal]

>I feel a little stupid asking this, but how do I install a latex
>package (say, something like the exam package, that is not part of the
>standard tetex) I download from CTAN?

Have you ever read the Formatting Information by Peter Flynn? One of its chapter deals with this aspect. Look for the beginlatex*.pdf (the latest is about 275 pages) on the internet.

Go for examdesign. I found it is better than exam. Download the entire files. It should have exam.ins and exam.dtx. Save them in a folder.
Now do the following

#latex exam.ins

it will create many files. One of them is exam.sty. 

create a folder callex exam in texmf/.../latex folder and move the *.sty files to this folder.

for documentation do the following 

#latex exam.dtx 

run makeindex exam also.

again run latex exam.dtx two times and your documentation file is ready. Probably separate documentation is available for exam.

then run texslr or texhash

Now you are ready to use exam.

Happy TeXing

D. Venugopal