So you’ve looked at all relevant FAQs you can find, you’ve looked in any books you have, and scanned relevant tutorials… and still you don’t know what to do.
If you are seeking a particular package or program, look on your own system first: you might already have it — the better TeX distributions contain a wide range of supporting material. The CTAN Catalogue can also identify packages that might help: you can search it, or you can browse it “by topic”. A catalogue entry has a brief description of the package, and links to any known documentation on the net. In fact, a large proportion of CTAN package directories now include documentation, so it’s often worth looking at the catalogue entry for a package you’re considering using.
Failing all that, look to see if anyone else has had the problem
before; there are two places where people ask: browse or search the
newsgroup comp.text.tex via
Google groups,
and the mailing list texhax via its
archive, or (as a long shot)
the archives of ancient posts on CTAN.
If those “back question” searches fail, you’ll have to ask the world
at large. To ask a question on comp.text.tex, you can use
your own news client (if you have one), or use the “start a new
topic” button on http://groups.google.com/group/comp.text.tex.
To ask a question on texhax, you may simply send mail to
texhax@tug.org, but it’s probably better to subscribe to the
list (via http://tug.org/mailman/listinfo/texhax)
first — not everyone will answer to you as well as to the list.
Do not try mailing the LaTeX project team, the maintainers of the TeX Live or MiKTeX distributions or the maintainers of these FAQs for help; while all these addresses reach experienced (La)TeX users, no small group can possibly have expertise in every area of usage so that the “big” lists are a far better bet.
This question on the Web: http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=gethelp