GNU Emacs Manual - TeX Mode

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## TeX Mode

TeX is a powerful text formatter written by Donald Knuth; it is also free, like GNU Emacs. LaTeX is a simplified input format for TeX, implemented by TeX macros; it comes with TeX. SliTeX is a special form of LaTeX.

Emacs has a special TeX mode for editing TeX input files. It provides facilities for checking the balance of delimiters and for invoking TeX on all or part of the file.

TeX mode has three variants, Plain TeX mode, LaTeX mode, and SliTeX mode (these three distinct major modes differ only slightly). They are designed for editing the three different formats. The command `M-x tex-mode` looks at the contents of the buffer to determine whether the contents appear to be either LaTeX input or SliTeX input; if so, it selects the appropriate mode. If the file contents do not appear to be LaTeX or SliTeX, it selects Plain TeX mode. If the contents are insufficient to determine this, the variable `tex-default-mode` controls which mode is used.

When `M-x tex-mode` does not guess right, you can use the commands `M-x plain-tex-mode`, `M-x latex-mode`, and `M-x slitex-mode` to select explicitly the particular variants of TeX mode.

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