TEXDOC(1)

📦
version 73876 · 5 versions
, in arch rolling, debian trixie, fedora 44, opensuse-leap 16.0, ubuntu questing, ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

🎀 TEXDOC(1) · Texdoc manual 🎀

✨ NAME ✨

texdoc - find & view documentation in TeX Live 📚

💻 SYNOPSIS 💻

texdoc [OPTION]... NAME...
texdoc [OPTION]... ACTION

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

okay so texdoc tries to dig up the right TeX documentation for whatever NAME(s) you give it 🔍 ngl it's giving detective. Or, if you'd rather, hand it an ACTION instead and it'll do that and then bounce 🫶

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

  • -w, --view — view mode, so it starts a viewer ✨ (this is the default, bestie)
  • -m, --mixed — mixed mode, where it can view or list 🦋
  • -l, --list — list mode, shows you a list of results 📋
  • -s, --showall — showall mode, which also shows the "bad" results 👀
  • -i, --interact — interactive menus 💅 (default, obviously)
  • -I, --nointeract — plain lists, zero interaction needed 🙈
  • -M, --machine — machine-readable output for lists, and it implies -I 🤖
  • -q, --quiet — shhh, suppresses warnings and most error messages 🤫
  • -v, --verbose — spills extra info, like the viewer command 🗣️
  • -D, --debug — activates all the debug output (same as --debug=all) 😭
  • -d LIST, --debug=LIST — activates debug output only for the categories you name in LIST 🧚
    • the categories are: config, files, search, docfile, score, texdocs, tlpdb, version, view, and all if you want every single one 💜
  • -c NAME=VALUE — sets the configuration item NAME to VALUE ⚙️

👑 ACTIONS 👑

  • -h, --help — prints the help message 🆘
  • -V, --version — prints the version number 🔢
  • -f, --files — prints the list of configuration files being used 📂
  • --just-view FILE — displays FILE, which you have to give with its full path, so no searching happens 🎯
  • --print-completion SHELL — prints the completion for SHELL 🐚

🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

okay so these environment variables can be split by colon and used to set viewers 💖

  • BROWSER, BROWSER_texdoc — sets the command for HTML documents 🌐
  • DVIVIEWER, DVIVIEWER_texdoc — sets the command for DVI documents 📄
  • MDVIEWER, MDVIEWER_texdoc — sets the command for Markdown documents 📝
  • PAGER, PAGER_texdoc — sets the command for text documents 📃
  • PDFVIEWER, PDFVIEWER_texdoc — sets the command for PDF documents 📕
  • PSVIEWER, PSVIEWER_texdoc — sets the command for PS documents 🗞️

these ones get used too:

  • LANG, LC_ALL, LANGUAGE, LANGUAGE_texdoc — set the locale, which changes what search results you get 🌍
  • TEXDOCS — on top of the docs in the TeX Live database, Texdoc also searches for documentation under the TEXMF trees listed in the kpathsea variable TEXDOCS 🔎

📂 FILES 📂

<texmf>/texdoc/texdoc.cnf, and you can see the real path with the output of the --files option 🗂️

🚦 EXIT STATUS 🚦

so the texdoc command exits with one of these values:

  • 0 — success, we did it 🥳
  • 1 — internal error 💀
  • 2 — usage error, so check how you typed that 🙈
  • 3 — no documentation found 😿

🐛 REPORTING BUGS 🐛

if something's broken, tell the devs! 🫶

Copyright 2008-2025 Manuel Pe'gourie'-Gonnard, Takuto Asakura, the TeX Live Team 💜 License: GNU GPL version 3 or later http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html 📜 this is free software, so you're free to change and redistribute it 🦋

🔗 SEE ALSO 🔗

the full documentation is kept as a PDF manual 📖 bestie, this command should get you to the complete manual:

texdoc texdoc

that's a wrap on Texdoc 4.1.1 (February 2025) 🎀 stay curious, stay caffeinated, and go read some docs 💅✨

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