Errata list for The LATEX Companion, Second Edition(4. printing)
Includes all entries found between 2004/04/22 and 2023/01/08(For other periods/print runs reprocess this document with different config settings)@book(A-W:MG04,
author = {Frank Mittelbach and Michel Goossens},
title = {The {\LaTeX} Companion},edition = 2,
note = {With Johannes Braams, David Carlisle, and Chris Rowley},series ={Tools and Techniques for Computer Typesetting},
publisher = {Addison-Wesley},address= {Boston, Massachusetts},
year = 2004,
pagenums = {1120},bibliography = {yes},
index = {yes},isbn = {0-201-36299-6},)
This file (tlc2.err) can be found as part of the LATEX distribution and its latest version is maintainedon the LATEX project site at https://www.latex-project.org/help/books/tlc2.err where you will
also find extracts of the book.
The first column in the table shows the page number of the errata entry. Superscript numbers in thefirst column refer to the printed revision in which this entry was corrected (s indicates a correction in
the sources only). The second column gives the precise location (negative line or paragraph numbers
are counted from the bottom of the page). The third column shows the first finder of the problem.
You can customize this list to only show errata related to the printing you own by changing theconfiguration in the file tlc2.cfg.

To Err is Human — Bug Contest
Any mistake found and reported is a gain for all readers of our book. For this reason Addison-Wesley
and the authors offer a prize (for 5 periods) to the eligible person who finds the largest number ofbugs during that period (in case of a draw a random choice will be made between all those with thelargest number of findings). A person can receive at most one prize, ever; errors found by any of theauthors do not count.
Each prize is a free choice of any single computing book found on the AW Professional web site
http://www.awprofessional.com (that is, no boxed sets or multiple volume offers).
As usual, the authors and publisher reserve the right to make various decisions such as whether areported feature is an error for competitive purposes or whether similar features count as a single ormultiple errors. — Good luck!
Contest period ends
2004/10
2005/04
2005/10
2006/04
2008/05

WinnerHubert Gäßlein
Ulrich Dirr
Daniel Alonso i Alemany
Michael SchutteBrooks Moses– final draw was 2008/05 –1287 suggestions
11 suggestions
13 suggestions
2 suggestions
1 suggestion

Errata for The LATEX Companion, Second Edition (between 2004/04/22 and 2023/01/08)

General!! general(FMi)To help you in assessing this errata document we have placed
exclamation marks in front of each entry that we consider essential forcorrectly understanding the book contents.

general(FMi)Due to the printing process there may be small alignment problems
between blue and black text on some pages. These can vary frombook to book depending on how the paper was handled between print
runs—such is the analog nature of printing on a press.

general(FMi)Slightly updated examples matching the second printing will be madeavailable at CTAN: info/examples/tlc2. The book CD will have theoriginal examples from the first printing.

l.7(FMi)For the record: the term “for ever” is the British spelling and aconscious decision.

21

para -2, l.2(MLi)The command is called \AskOption (without “s”)

35

para 1(hajk)

Package fncychap also makes unwanted “Chapter 0” heading for\chapter{Preface} in \frontmatter of book.
Comment: I don’t really consider this a bug (as it is not surprisingwith such designs) but will see if it can be explicitly mentioned.

87

exa. 3-1-15(V-Li)\- should be used on a word that is actually hyphenated.
Well, would be nice but not easy to find one.

117

para 1, l.1(EOl)

Missing letter: “to choose”

142

exa 3-3-21/22(UZi)With the newest version of amsthm the font setting for the headline isignored for the optional description of the theorem (looks like a bug inamsthm).

150

exa 3-3-28(JBez)

The vertical space above "Return values" is too small.

Front matterv

Chapter 1
Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 42

Errata for The LATEX Companion, Second Edition (between 2004/04/22 and 2023/01/08)
196

table 4.2

(YiL)

The values shown in the table aren’t any quite correct. These dayssome of them are calculated depending on the chosen paper sizeoption and so have slightly different values from what is listed in thetable. The values listed are those that have been used in 2.09 (i.e.,they would be fully correct in compatibility mode, that is for
documents starting with \documentstyle).

347 spara 2, l.5+6(JS/FMi)

Replace: “Computer Modern Typewriter and Computer Modern Sans
have only bold extended variants.” → “In contrast Computer Modern
Sans has only bold extended variants.”

349

Table 7.4(AFV)The font associated with the command \mathtt is a sans typewriter
font. This differs from nearly all TeX set ups where the mathtypewriter font is Computer Modern Typewriter.

414

footnote(hv)Replace: \pcharpath → \pscharpath.
These days the package pst-char has been integrated into pst-text.

table 8-10/11(FMi)

Added the missing symbol from amssymb: \circledR, \yen,\checkmark, and \maltese.
The general distribution of symbols between the two tables is a bitquestionable, but this will stay as it is.

528

table 8.11(LHe)\dag and \ddag are \mathords not \mathbin as claimed in table 8.13.
Frank: This is actually correct nowadays (maybe it wasn’t in 2008)

530

table 8.13(LHe)\dag and \ddag are not \mathbins, hence don’t belong in this table
and they aren’t (as claimed in legend) synonyms of \dagger and\ddagger respectively.
Frank: This is actually correct nowadays (maybe it wasn’t in 2008)537 stable 8-27

(DIs/FMi)

Added the four missing delimiters from amssymb: \llcorner,\lrcorner, \ulcorner, and \urcorner. Updated the table note andgalley text accordingly.

table 9.1

(MHe/JBr)

The Babel implementation on the CD is missing the australian andnewzealand options. If you need them, download a new version ofBabel.

Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7

Chapter 8527,528 s

Chapter 9!!

543

3

Errata for The LATEX Companion, Second Edition (between 2004/04/22 and 2023/01/08)

!!

551

tab 9.3(CBe)

I am surprised that in Russian there is no word for “Glossary”.
Frank: It most certainly exists :-), but right now Babel doesn’t know
about it—so there is nothing we can do about it at the moment.
Actually the same problem exists with Polish, although here I got atranslation “słownik terminów” which will eventually find its way intoBabel.

553

para 3, l.1(EOl)

Missing letter: “suppressing”

580

language.daton CD(WaS)

The language name problem, i.e.,usenglish → USenglish
ukenglish → UKenglish
is also present in the language.dat file on the book CD.

592

generalremarks(PPn)Additional remarks not for inclusion in the book: For TEX, LATEX in
languages of India, there are several nice packages. An overview canbe found in the following TUGboat Articles;
1. Anshuman Pandey, An overview of Indic Fonts for TEX,TUGboat Volume 19, Number 2 / June 1998 115—119
2. Anshuman Pandey, Typesetting Bengali in TEX, TUGboat
Volume 20, Number 2, June 1999 119—126
3. C. V. Radhakrishnan, A case for TEX in India, TUGboat
Volume 19, Number 1, March 1998, 6—9.
4. Karel Píška, A conversion of public Indic fonts from
METAFONT into Type I format with TeXTRACE, Volume23, Number 1, 2002, 70—73
5. Yannis Haralambous and John Plaice, Low-level Devanāgari
support for Omega– Adapting devnag, i Volume 23, Number 1,2002, 50—56
In addition to these articles, TUGIndia has uploaded two LATEX 2εpackages (i) Malayalam for LATEX 2ε , and (ii) Kannada LATEX, bothavailable from www.sarovar.org.
A remark on devnag package:– Originally developed by Frans Velthuisin 1991, it was upgraded for use with LATEX 2ε (madeNFSS-complaint), and maintained by a team consisting of Dominik
Wujastyk, John Smith, Anshuman Pandey, François Patte, andZdeněk Wagner. Very recently, the project has been handed over toTUGIndia, for further development, and as of May 2004, it has moved
from sourceforge.net to sarovar.org.

Chapter 10
615 s

Tab. 10.1(FMi)

The important driver “vtex” is missing. On the other hand some of
the listed drivers are only of historical interest.

617

Fig. 10-2-2(EOl)

A “%” should follow the ending “}” of the two \bluefboxes.

4Errata for The LATEX Companion, Second Edition (between 2004/04/22 and 2023/01/08)

!!

619 s

viewport(BMo/FMi)

Explanation of viewport key changed to better explain that it onlychanges the space reserved but doesn’t prevent printing the wholegraphic (unless clip is used additionally)

620 s

(FMi)

Text changes on previous page results in different page break.

621

editorialchangeFig. 10-2-8(EOl)

A “%” should follow the ending “}” of the first \bluefbox.

631 spara.2, l.6(FMi/HjG)

Replace: "‘This point is shown . . . "’ → "‘This is shown . . . "’633 s

example(HjG)

The first column shows incorrect output: instead of x=0mm it uses
some internal default.

634 s

editorialchangepara 3, l.1(FMi)

Fix on previous page will change page break.

(FMi)

Unfortunately Thành’s name is misspelled. The correct spelling is“Hàn Thế Thành”.

(CBe)

How horrible the page rotated counterclockwise!

(AFV)

Correct: \markkboth → \markboth

several pages(HVo/FMi)

The German word “Schuldrecht” is incorrectly hyphenated as“Schuldrecht” in several examples due to the fact that English
hyphenation patterns are used unless the language is explicitlymarked. This is a deliberate effect, see pages 719 and 733–734.

exa
12-5-48/49(HjG)

There’s a spurious space before all occurrences of “D. E. Knuth”!
This is (partly, ie in the footnote) due to a missing percent in thedefinition of \@realcite and \@printbibliography in the camel
package. Seems that a problem with the volume parsing in camel isthe reason for the surplus spaces showing up in the bibliography
output. Reported to the author.

643 s

Chapter 11
656 s
680 s

First code
block

Chapter 12
general744

Chapter 13
767 s

l.7

(SPe)

“Miguel Parra Benavides” is missing closing quotes.

767 sl.10(SPe)“Parra” and “Benavides” are missing closing quotes.

798 s

tab 13.5, l.
1-2(MSch)

Replace: “Erwin” → ’‘Ervin”(MSch)

Replace: text/latex/base → tex/latex/base

Chapter 14832 s

2. code block5Errata for The LATEX Companion, Second Edition (between 2004/04/22 and 2023/01/08)
834

para 5(FMi)Explain that \cmd can’t be used with conditionals, e.g., those
produced with \newif .

837

exa 14-4-1(FMi)

Editorial comment: example has to be reprocessed whenever thischapter is modified to show correct rcs checkin (otherwise input andoutput will not match).

839

exa 14-4-2(FMi)Editorial comment: example has to be reprocessed whenever thischapter is modified to show correct rcs checkin (otherwise input andoutput will not match).

(VVo)

Replace: “An error is raised if the definitions differ, ldots” → “Awarning is shown if the definitions differ, . . . ”(FMi)

Replace: Figure C.2 → Figure C.1

Appendix A
847

para -2, l.3

Appendix B
Appendix C
950 spara 1, l.2

Bibliography
971 s

[74]

(FMi)

Add “Lars Hellström” as author. Change date to December 2004.
Change comment to “Documentation for the fontinst utility packagethat supports . . . ”

976 s

[117]

(FMi)

The title is “E-TEX: Guidelines for Future TEX Extensions”.

981 s[158]-[162](RKo)

Unfortunately Thành’s name is misspelled (accents in [161/2]). The
correct spelling is “Hàn Thế Thành”.
Furthermore, the surename is Hàn so the entries should have beensorted under H (something that can’t be corrected easily).

index

(FMi)

I do not list changes to the index that are results of other errata
entries as they are too difficult to track. Instead I will put an updated
index on the web athttps://www.latex-project.org/help/books/tlc2-ap4.pdf once ina while.

990 s(J-CCh)Correct range: author-date citations / history of (699, 700)

992 s(J-CCh)Correct: “Bézier”

1000 s(J-CCh)Correct range: Citation systems / author-date / history of (699, 700)

Index
983–1082

6Errata for The LATEX Companion, Second Edition (between 2004/04/22 and 2023/01/08)
1019 s(J-CCh)Correct range: fonts / oblique (333)

PeopleBiographies
Production Notes

Thanks to all who have found errors or omissions. Listed are the people who found an errata entry first.
AFVAHo
AMa
ARi
BMo
BeB
CAR
CBCCBaCBeCKr
DAl
DAr
DCa
DHL
DIs
DSchEOl
ERy
FHa
FMi
GBa
HObHPB
HVo
HjG

Alfonso Fernandez-Vazquez (3)Antti Honkela (1)Arni Magnusson (1)Alan Ristow (1)Brooks Moses (17)Bernd Burghardt (1)Chris A. Rowley (14)Charles B. Cameron (17)Cristian Battaglia (2)Claudio Beccari (22)Claudia Krysztofiak (35)Daniel Alonso i Alemany (15)
Donald Arseneau (5)David Carlisle (1)Dan Luecking (14)Daniel Isaacson (1)Dirk Schlimm (3)Edgar Olthof (4)Elizabeth Ryan (1)Ferdy Hanssen (1)Frank Mittelbach (116)Gerhard Bachmaier (1)Heiko Oberdiek (13)Harold P. Boas (1)Herbert Voss (1)Hubert Gäßlein (314)J-CCh Jean-Côme Charpentier (7)JAnJacques André (2)JBez Javier Bezos (1)JBeJens Berger (1)JBr
Johannes Braams (2)JChJoel Chan (1)JGrJose Grimm (5)JJN
Jarmo Niemelä (1)
JLVJuan Luis Varona (1)JMH Jean-Michel Hufflen (11)JS
Joachim Schrod (6)JTaJuhani Takkinen (1)
LHe
Lars Hellström (2)LMa
Lars Madsen (1)LSchu Lothar Schumacher (1)MBrMarion Braams (6)MGo Michel Goossens
MHCL Martin Hiu Chung Law (1)MHe Martin Hensel (4)MHo Morten Høgholm (3)MKo Markus Kohm (1)MKu Markus Kuhn (11)MLaMark Laplante (1)MLi
Martin Liebmann (1)MSc
Martin Schröder (7)MSch Michael Schutte (2)

NBe
PPN
PYu
RKo
RPa
RStRWaReSt
SCoSEg
SPe
THa
TMW
TMiTSSUFiUZi
V-Li
VPe
VVoWAdWaSYiL
YvH
hajkusw

Other people have sent us corrections for errors already found. Thanks to all of you!
If you find further errors please report them to one of the authors, e.g.,frank.mittelbach@latex-project.org
preferably in a form usable directly in this file, i.e.,\erroronpage{page-number }{line-identification}{your-initials}{date}{}description of the erratum

Nelson Beebe (1)P.P. Narayanaswami (3)Peng Yu (12)Reinhard Kotucha (1)Reimo Palm (6)Ralf Stubner (2)Richard Walker (2)Rebecca Stiels (2)Steven Douglas Cochran (1)Stephen Eglen (1)Saša Petrović (2)Thorsten Hansen (19)Thomas Widmann (3)Tom Micevski (1)Tommi Syrjänen (5)Ulrike Fischer (54)Uwe Ziegenhagen (1)Christian Faulhammer (2)Vivi Petersen (1)Vladimir Volovich (1)William Adams (1)Walter Schmidt (5)Yiannis Lazarides (1)Yvon Henel (2)Henk Koster (1)Ulrich Dirr (11)7Errata for The LATEX Companion, Second Edition (between 2004/04/22 and 2023/01/08)
Here is an example:\erroronpage{5}{para 3, l.1}{MOs}{1997/06/01}{}‘‘LaTeX’’ should be typeset ‘‘\LaTeX’’.

8