A minimal class file

Most of the work of a class or package is in defining new commands, or changing the appearance of documents. This is done in the body of the package, using commands such as \newcommand or \setlength.

L^ATEX2_e provides several new commands to help class and package writers; these are described in detail in Section 4. There are three things that every class file must contain: these are a definition of \normalsize and values for \textwidth and \textheight. So a minimal document class file looks like this:

   \NeedsTeXFormat{LaTeX2e}
   \ProvidesClass{minimal}[1995/10/30 Standard LaTeX minimal class]
   \renewcommand{\normalsize}{\fontsize{10pt}{12pt}\selectfont}
   \setlength{\textwidth}{6.5in}
   \setlength{\textheight}{8in}

However, this class file will not support footnotes, marginals, floats, etc., nor will it provide any of the 2-letter font commands such as \rm; thus most classes will contain more than this minimum!