The tex-latex2e system is widely used as a sensible alternative to conventional word processors for the production of documents that contain mathematical formulae, that are long, that are complex, that contain text using different types of alphabets, that must be of the highest quality, and that are to be used and modified over many years. Indeed, many computer users produce all of their documents with this system.

This system is generally provided with most Unix type operating systems, and is also available for inferior operating systems as well.

The system can be extended by adding "packages" to it. There have been several attempts to produce these for chemical formulae. The most widely used, and the one most agree is best is xymtex. Xymtex is fairly sophisticated, and it is fairly easy to use. The documentation included with the package is also very good when it comes to telling how to use it.

There are several barriers to the installation of xymtex:

• 1. The primary web site is completely in Japanese.
• 2. The source there is compressed with lda, lda is not generally available.
• 3. The installation instructions in the package are not valid for modern systems.

Since you are reading this web site, you must be interested in adding the xymtex package to your system. It is assumed that you have a functioning latex2e system installed on your computer. To add xymtex to your system you must do the following things:

• 1. Determine if you have lda available on your system. This is best done by typing "which lda" at a shell prompt. If lda be present, which will respond with the path to it. Otherwise it will tell you that it is not present.
• 2. Verify that your tex-latex installation is in the standard place, your /usr/share/ directory should contain a directory called texmf. If it be not there find it! (And modify instructions that follow accordingly.)
• 3. If you have lda on your system you can click on the lda download below. Otherwise you can click on the tar.gz download. (The lda version is from Japan, the tar.gz one is from here.)
• 4. Log in as root. Copy the xymtex source file (xymtx300.lzh or xymtx300.tar.gz) you have just unloaded to /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/, (or if your installation be nonstandard to the texmf/tex/latex/ in whatever directory you have texmf.)
• 5. If you have xymtx300.lzh type "lda -x xymtx300.lzh" while in /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/, otherwise type "tar -zxvf xymtx300.tar.gz". This should create a new directory, /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/xymtex. When you are satisfied that it has done so delete the lzh or tar.gz file.
• 6. In order to locate style files like the xymtex package the tex system needs to know two things: (1) the path to the files, and (2) the names of the files. The path is determined by the file texmf.cnf. DO NOT edit this file, even though the instructions with the package say to do so. If you place the directory in the correct location, it ALREADY is on the path. To let the system know the names of the files on the path, you must run the executable provided with the latex system called texhash. It apt to be NOT on your path when your are logged in as root, and you must be logged in as root to run it! If it be in its standard location, you can type as root, "/usr/share/texmf/bin/texhash" and it should run and the system should be ready to go.
• 7. logout as root, and test the system. You can download the sample file below to see if everything is as it should be. Download it, and place it in a working directory and type "latex testchem". It should produce a dvi file. Read it with xdvi to be sure. You might want to copy the dvi documentation files from the xymtex directory and print them out. They are quite good and do a good job of explaining how to use xymtex efficiently.

Links for downloading: