CTAN

CTAN (an acronym for "Comprehensive TeX Archive Network") is the authoritative place where TeX related material and software can be found for download. Repositories for other projects, such as the MiKTeX distribution of TeX, constantly mirror most of CTAN.

The Perl archive, CPAN, is based on the CTAN model.

History

Before CTAN there were a number of people who made some TeX materials available for public download, but there was no systematic collection. At a podium discussion that Joachim Schrod organized at the 1991 EuroTeX conference, the idea arose to bring together the separate collections. (Joachim was interested in this topic because he is active in the TeX community since 1983 and ran one of the largest ftp servers in Germany at that time.)

CTAN was built in 1992, by Rainer Schöpf and Joachim Schrod in Germany, Sebastian Rahtz in the UK, and George Greenwade in the U.S. (George came up with the name). Today, there are still only three people who maintain the archives and the TeX catalogue updates: Petra Ruebe-Pugliese, Rainer Schöpf and Robin Fairbairns. The site structure was put together at the start of 1992 – Sebastian did the main work – and synchronized at the start of 1993. The TeX Users Group provided a framework, a Technical Working Group, for this task's organization. CTAN was officially announced at the EuroTeX conference at Aston University, 1993.