Essential Utilities for LaTeX Package and Class Development
Developing LaTeX packages or classes is not a common task for most users, who typically rely on pre-existing packages. According to the CTAN: Comprehensive TeX Archive Network , there are only 3,040 TeX developers worldwide (as of February 2025). As a result, online resources for LaTeX package and class development are relatively scarce. From my perspective, there isn’t currently a comprehensive guide to the utility commands essential for package development. So, I’ve compiled this blog post, gathering a set of useful commands and packages I’ve discovered or developed through experience. I hope it proves helpful for anyone who is developing—or planning to develop—LaTeX packages or classes. This post also serves as a personal reference for me to revisit the next time I work on a package. This post will be a dynamic document, and I’ll update it as I discover new commands. If you have any useful commands that I haven’t mentioned, please feel free to share them in the ...