How to get help

So you’ve looked at all relevant FAQs you can find, you’ve looked in any books you have, and scanned relevant tutorials... and still you don’t know what to do.

If you are seeking a particular package or program, look on your own system first: you might already have it — the better TeX distributions contain a wide range of supporting material. The CTAN Catalogue can also help: you can search it, or you can browse it “by topic”. A catalogue entry has a description of the package, and links to any documentation known on the net. ... when the entry is up-to-date.

Failing all that, look to see if anyone else has had the problem before; there are two places where people ask: browse or search the newsgroup comp.text.tex via Google groups, and the mailing list texhax via its archive

If those “back question” searches fail, you’ll have to ask the world at large. To ask a question on comp.text.tex, you can use your own news client (if you have one), or use the “start a new topic” button on http://groups.google.com/group/comp.text.tex. To ask a question on texhax, you may simply send mail to texhax@tug.org, but it’s probably better to subscribe to the list (via http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/texhax) first — not everyone will answer to you as well as to the list.

This question on the Web: http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=gethelp