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-<head>
-<title>UK TeX FAQ -- question label erroradvice</title>
-</head><body>
-<h3>How to approach errors</h3>
-<p/>Since TeX is a macroprocessor, its error messages are often
-difficult to understand; this is a (seemingly invariant) property of
-macroprocessors. Knuth makes light of the problem in the TeXbook,
-suggesting that you acquire the sleuthing skills of a latter-day
-Sherlock Holmes; while this approach has a certain romantic charm to
-it, it&#8217;s not good for the &#8216;production&#8217; user of (La)TeX. This
-answer (derived, in part, from an article by Sebastian Rahtz in
-<i>TUGboat</i> 16(4)) offers some general guidance in dealing with TeX
-error reports, and other answers in this section deal with common (but
-perplexing) errors that you may encounter. There&#8217;s a long list of
-&#8220;hints&#8221; in Sebastian&#8217;s article, including the following:
-<ul>
-<li> Look at TeX errors; those messages may seem cryptic at first,
- but they often contain a straightforward clue to the problem. See
- <a href="FAQ-errstruct.html">the structure of errors</a> for further
- details.
-<li> Read the <code>.log</code> file; it contains hints to things you may
- not understand, often things that have not even presented as error
- messages.
-<li> Be aware of the amount of context that TeX gives you. The
- error messages gives you some bits of TeX code (or of the
- document itself), that show where the error &#8220;actually happened&#8221;;
- it&#8217;s possible to control how much of this &#8216;context&#8217; TeX actually
- gives you. LaTeX (nowadays) instructs TeX only to give you
- one line of context, but you may tell it otherwise by saying
-<blockquote>
-<pre>
-\setcounter{errorcontextlines}{999}
-</pre>
-</blockquote><p>
- in the preamble of your document. (If you&#8217;re not a confident macro
- programmer, don&#8217;t be ashamed of cutting that 999 down a bit; some
- errors will go on and <em>on</em>, and spotting the differences
- between those lines can be a significant challenge.)
-<li> As a last resort, tracing can be a useful tool; reading a full
- (La)TeX trace takes a strong constitution, but once you know how,
- the trace can lead you quickly to the source of a problem. You need
- to have read the TeXbook (see
-
- <a href="FAQ-books.html">books about TeX</a>) in some detail, fully
- to understand the trace.
-<p/> The command <code>\</code><code>tracingall</code> sets up maximum tracing; it also sets
- the output to come to the interactive terminal, which is somewhat of
- a mixed blessing (since the output tends to be so vast &#8212; all but
- the simplest traces are best examined in a text editor after the event).
-<p/> The LaTeX <i>trace</i> package (first distributed with the
- 2001 release of LaTeX) provides more manageable tracing. Its
- <code>\</code><code>traceon</code> command gives you what <code>\</code><code>tracingall</code> offers, but
- suppresses tracing around some of the truly verbose parts of
- LaTeX itself. The package also provides a <code>\</code><code>traceoff</code>
- command (there&#8217;s no &#8220;off&#8221; command for <code>\</code><code>tracingall</code>), and a
- package option (<code>logonly</code>) allows you to suppress output to the
- terminal.
-</ul>
-The best advice to those faced with TeX errors is not to panic:
-most of the common errors are plain to the eye when you go back to the
-source line that TeX tells you of. If that approach doesn&#8217;t work,
-the remaining answers in this section deal with some of the odder
-error messages you may encounter. You should not ordinarily need to
-appeal to the <a href="FAQ-gethelp.html">wider public</a>
-for assistance, but if you do, be sure to
-report full backtraces (see <code>errorcontextlines</code> above) and so on.
-<dl>
-<dt><tt><i>trace.sty</i></tt><dd>Distributed as part of <a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/macros/latex/required/tools.zip">macros/latex/required/tools</a> (or <a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/macros/latex/required/tools/">browse the directory</a>); <a href="http://mirror.ctan.org/help/Catalogue/entries/trace.html">catalogue entry</a>
-</dl>
-<p/><p>This question on the Web: <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=erroradvice">http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=erroradvice</a>
-</body>