The Document Format

The engine itself is small — boxes, glue, macros, math. The familiar article furniture (titles, sections, lists, figures) comes from a format you load at the top of a document:

\use{document}

This is the analogue of plain TeX’s format or a LaTeX document class, kept deliberately small. \use resolves the format from texish’s bundled packages, so nothing else is needed. Everything below assumes it is loaded.

The everyday conveniences — the size ladder (\large, \Large, …), the vertical skips (\smallskip/\medskip/\bigskip), single-line alignment (\centerline and friends), the TeX logos and the center / flushleft / quote environments — actually live in a lighter package, base, that carries none of the article furniture. document builds on it (\use{base}), so they are all available here; but a page that wants only those — a caption, a flyer, a title card — can load \use{base} alone and skip titles, sections and page numbering. (The inline shape commands \italic, \bold, \smallcaps, \mono and friends are engine primitives — available with no package at all.)

Title block

Declare the title, author, and date, then typeset the block with \maketitle:

\title{On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies}
\author{A. Einstein}
\date{June 1905}
\maketitle

Each is optional; \maketitle centers whichever were given.

Abstract

\begin{abstract}
A short summary of the document, indented on both sides under a centered heading.
\end{abstract}

Sections

\section and \subsection are auto-numbered; a subsection’s number resets with each new section. The first paragraph after a heading is set flush left with no indent, as in a LaTeX article; following paragraphs indent.

\section{Introduction}
The opening paragraph sits flush against the left margin.

A second paragraph opens with the usual first-line indent.

\subsection{Background}
Numbered 1.1, 1.2, and so on.

Cross-references and a table of contents

\label binds a name to the section (or figure or table) it follows — its number, its kind, its title and its page. \ref prints that number later and \pageref prints the page it landed on. Forward references work because the document is typeset twice over a shared label table — the first pass learns every number and page, the second fills them in.

\section{Results}
\label{sec:results}
...

As shown in section~\ref{sec:results} on page~\pageref{sec:results}, ...

Three more references read the other things \label recorded: \autoref prints the number with its kind word in front (Section 3, Figure 1), \nameref prints the title, and \eqref prints the number in parentheses for an equation.

\autoref{sec:results} confirms the bound; see also ``\nameref{sec:results}''.

\tableofcontents (or \contents, which adds an unnumbered heading) lists the sections with their page numbers and a dotted leader between, built from the headings that have been recorded. \listoffigures and \listoftables do the same for captioned floats — each \caption files itself into the matching list — and \listoffigs / \listoftabs add an unnumbered heading above them:

\maketitle
\contents
\listoffigs

Lists

Lists nest, and the markers hang to the left of the text so wrapped lines align under the content rather than the marker.

\begin{enumerate}
\item First point.
\item Second point.
\end{enumerate}

\begin{itemize}
\item A bullet.
\item Another bullet, with a nested list:
  \begin{itemize}
  \item a deeper bullet.
  \end{itemize}
\end{itemize}

Quotations

quote indents a block on both sides; quotation indents it further. Both revert at the matching \end.

\begin{quote}
The art of writing is the art of discovering what you believe.
\end{quote}

Footnotes

\footnote raises a numbered marker in the text and sets its body at the foot of whatever page the marker lands on.

The result was first noted by Gauss\footnote{In a letter of 1809.} and later refined.

Spacing and page breaks

\smallskip   \medskip   \bigskip       % named vertical gaps
\vskip 12pt plus 2pt minus 1pt         % explicit vertical glue
\vfill                                  % stretchable fill to the page bottom
\eject                                  % force a page break (\vfill\eject to flush)

Page breaks are chosen by cost, as in TeX: the break of least badness-plus-penalty wins, so a positive \penalty steers a break away from a spot that would strand material at the foot of a page. On an ordinary page (rigid interline glue) this comes to the same thing as filling each page as far as it will go.

Multiple columns

\columns{n}{…} sets its body as n balanced columns — typeset once at the column measure, then divided into pieces of nearly equal height and stood side by side. An optional gap: sets the gutter (one em by default).

\columns{2}{
A long passage that the engine pours into two columns of equal height, the way a newspaper or a
two-column paper reads: down the first column, then back up to the top of the second.
}

\columns gap:24pt {3}{ ... three columns with a wider gutter ... }

A balanced block is set as a single unit, so it sits within one page rather than flowing across a page break.

Boxes, minipages, and lengths

\mbox keeps a phrase on one line; \makebox gives a box an explicit width, with its content flush left, centred, flush right, or stretched (l / c / r / s); and \parbox sets a whole paragraph into a box of a chosen width, so two columns of text can sit side by side. The width may be a dimension or a fraction of \linewidth.

\mbox{Newton--Raphson}                       % never breaks across a line
\makebox[0.5\linewidth][r]{flush right}
\parbox{0.3\linewidth}{A paragraph set in a narrow box.}

minipage is the environment form of \parbox, which reads better for more than a few words. The optional [t] / [c] / [b] aligns the box on the surrounding baseline by its first line, centre, or last line:

\begin{minipage}[t]{0.45\linewidth}
The left column of a two-column row.
\end{minipage}\hskip 24pt \begin{minipage}[t]{0.45\linewidth}
The right column, top-aligned with the left.
\end{minipage}

A length is a dimension variable. \newlength declares one, \setlength assigns it, and \addtolength adjusts it; the result is read back as \name and drives real spacing:

\newlength{gutter}
\setlength{gutter}{20pt}
\addtolength{gutter}{1em}
\hskip\gutter

\if {test} … \else … \fi chooses a branch on a boolean test. The test is an ordinary expression, so \= compares two strings and the comparison operators (\>, \<) compare numbers.

\if {\> {\the\pageno} {1}} not the first page \else the first page \fi

Running heads and feet

The format ships a page number in the footer. Override \footline, or define a \headline, to change the running head or foot; \the\pageno is the current page.

\def headline {\hfil\italic{Draft}\hfil}

See figures and images for \figure, \caption, and centering, and text and markup for emphasis, code, colour, and links.