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Is there anything such as LaTeX documentation? When I am looking for some syntax on google, I only get to forums, but never a site with actual documentation, such as when looking for the meaning of \thechapter or \let. It seems everyone knows meaning of things like secnumdepth but where does this knowledge come from other than going through the sources and hoping the developer left a useful comment? I know for packages to go to ctan but other than that...

atapaka
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    Here's something to chew on that you may not be quite aware about: the command \thechapter is something that properly belongs to the LaTeX world (it has to do with counters, which is a LaTeX improvement (?) over the plain TeX counts); the command \let is however something belonging to the plain TeX world. The previous comment addresses the LaTeX portion of your question. But if you are interested in learning about plain TeX stuff, most of the resources there will not address them. // That said, if you are familiar with LaTeX already, then searching this forum is a good way to learn TeX. – Willie Wong Mar 02 '20 at 19:27
  • Unfortunately there's no single good reference documentation in the LaTeX world, because each layer has its own documentation: (•1•) TeX stuff (The TeXbook, Tex By Topic) (•2•) Other engine stuff (The eTeX, pdfTeX, XeTeX and LuaTeX manuals) (•3•) LaTeX stuff (Lamport's book, some answers to the linked qeustion, etc), (•4•) Package stuff (CTAN, texdoc for that package). And no good way to find out where something lies (e.g. \let, \scantokens, \secnumdepth and \begin{align} … \end{align} are all at different layers and should be looked up in different places). – ShreevatsaR Mar 02 '20 at 21:15
  • Moreover, documentation in this world tends to be of a generic “manual” type, rather than clearly demarcated as tutorial, how-to, explanation, and reference. The fact that you asked for a reference and your question was closed as a duplicate of a question about "learning resources for a LaTeX beginner" (and among whose answers there are very few resources of the reference type) is suggestive :-) – ShreevatsaR Mar 02 '20 at 21:16
  • @ShreevatsaR Thanks for the link regarding documentation. – Dr. Manuel Kuehner Mar 02 '20 at 23:18
  • @ShreevatsaR Thank you. That would classify as an answer. – atapaka Mar 03 '20 at 14:35
  • Related: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/2124/is-there-a-comprehensive-and-complete-latex-reference – Anton Tarasenko May 14 '20 at 14:01

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