General ⇒ Recognizing packages

[msmith25]

Hello,

I am having a great deal of difficulty getting TeXnicCenter to recognize a number of packages I thought were basic. It does not know what to do with the command:

\usepackage{amslatex}

in the preamble, instead requiring that I write:

\usepackage{amssymb}

which does not define all the commands I need. For instance, amssymb does not tell TeX what "\text{...}" is supposed to do.

It would seem that my MiKTeX Package Manager knows about the amslatex package, and I thought TeXnicCenter knew about MiKTeX, but for some reason TeXnicCenter just doesn't want to recognize the amslatex package even though its help center talks about it. Furthermore, MiKTeX does not seem to know about amssymb, and in fact there doesn't seem to be any file on my machine with "amssymb" as part of its filename.

I am therefore quite baffled about how TeXnicCenter finds the packages I ask it to use or how to convince it to use packages I would like to use.

Is anyone able and willing to help me make sense of this?

In case this is relevant, I'm running TeXnicCenter's most current version, MiKTeX 2.7, and all on Vista SP2.

Thanks for any help!

~Michael Smith

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi Michael,

welcome to the board!
Use the package amsmath. It will automatically load the amstext package, containing the \text macro, and more, like amsbsy, amsopn.

Stefan

[msmith25]

Hello Stefan,

Thank you for your welcome!

Thank you for your suggestion, too. Unfortunately, I already tried using the amsmath package, and TeXnicCenter doesn't know how to interpret the command \usepackage{amsmath} in the preamble either.

Do you have any other suggestions?

~Michael

[josephwright]

Two questions:
1) Which version of MiKTeX are you using? With the latest one, there is a need to check some settings with TeXnicCenter:

http://miktex.org/2.8/issues

2) I'm not quite sure what you mean by "doesn't know how to interpret the command". I assume you are getting an error message, but you don't way what. Can you provide some more detail of what goes wrong?

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi Michael,

open the MiKTeX package manager and check, if amsmath is installed. If not, then install it:

Start/ MiKTeX/ Browse packages.

Joseph, he's using 2.7.

Stefan

[josephwright]

Joseph, he's using 2.7.

Thanks Stefan, missed that. I guess auto-install must be turned off, then.

[msmith25]

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "doesn't know how to interpret the command". I assume you are getting an error message, but you don't way what. Can you provide some more detail of what goes wrong?

Most bafflingly, I just now tried it again and there's no problem with the amsmath package. It'll even let me use the \text{...} command. MiKTeX's package manager doesn't say anything about amsmath being installed or not, so I'm not sure what to make of that.

However, although that solves my immediate problem, it doesn't tell me what's going on with the packages. MiKTeX claims amslatex is installed, and yet when I use \include{amslatex} in the preamble I get three errors:

• "LaTeX Error: File `amslatex.sty' not found."
• "Emergency stop."
• "==> Fatal error occurred, no output PDF file produced!"

open the MiKTeX package manager and check, if amsmath is installed. If not, then install it

I looked there before, and curiously neither of the two that work - amssymb or amsmath - are even mentioned there, but the one that is mentioned there - amslatex - does not work despite supposedly having been installed on February 22nd, 2008.

Also, I don't see any option to add packages to the list. I see an install button, but it's greyed out and unavailable. I assume the way this works is that I highlight one of the packages on the list that hasn't been installed, and then the button becomes available. If so, I have no idea how to get the package manager to find new packages to add them to the list.

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Hi Michael,

MiKTeX claims amslatex is installed, and yet when I use \include{amslatex} in the preamble I get three errors

MiKTeX package names do not not necessarily correspond to sty files. The MiKTeX package amslatex is a bundle, a collection of files, it contains amsmath.sty and many more files, but there's no amslatex.sty.

Stefan

[msmith25]

Hi Michael,

MiKTeX claims amslatex is installed, and yet when I use \include{amslatex} in the preamble I get three errors

MiKTeX package names do not not necessarily correspond to sty files. The MiKTeX package amslatex is a bundle, a collection of files, it contains amsmath.sty and many more files, but there's no amslatex.sty.

Stefan

Ah! So I have to look inside of amslatex to see which packages I want to include, and presumably amsmath didn't work before because of an error on my part (e.g. mistyping its name).

Thank you for your help!

~Michael