[Tugindia] package, class, style

[CV Radhakrishnan]

On Fri, 2006-12-29 at 20:40 +0530, Prof.Partha wrote:
> I have some fundamental (foolish) questions about basic LaTeX
> itself.
> 
> 1.  What is the official definition of a package, class, style ?

In TeX world, package is a generic name for any piece of software
written in TeX language.

Every document needs a class loaded if you want to process with LaTeX.
Essentially, the basic definitions of all environments or functions
which you might need to process your document are defined in a class.
LaTeX is distributed with a few classes like, minimal, article, book,
report, letter which are self explanatory as the names indicate.

A style is an add-on to the class, where additional functions or
environments are defined. Styles are a kind of modules which you can
load if and only if you really want them.

> 1a. How do they differ from each other ?

See above.

> 1b. Why do we do \usepackage when we actually want to use a style (.sty) ?

It is the macro defined in LaTeX kernel to load a style and allows us to
use various options provided in the package.  eg.,

 \usepackage[pdftex,colorlinks,booksmarksopen]{hyperref}

> 2. How do I get a list of all commands available in a package ?

Read the manual distributed with the package.

> Please excuse me if my questions seem foolish, or outright wrong.

By the way, do these explanations help you to use LaTeX more
effectively?

And there is one humble request if you happen to reply to this mail.
Please do not top-post, it is uncivilized way of answering to a mail.
Please allow your education and prudence to take charge of in situations
that demand civil behavior since I have found the most educated are the
worst offenders in this list.  Please learn to quote previous post, trim
it as for as possible, remove all the mastheads, footers, signatures in
the quoted mail inserted by the list software and enter your answer in
the right place instead of at the top.  

There is no point in adding your publicity material (disguised as
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interested in what you say.  Relevant RFC's of internet mailing says
that signatures shall be limited to a maximum of four lines.

Best regards

Radhakrishnan