When you get stuck — or want to support the tools — there is an active community. The key places: TeX Stack Exchange (Q&A — search here first), the TeX Users Group (TUG) and the Japanese TeX Development Community who maintain the software, and various forums.
The organizations behind it
TUG (TeX Users Group) is the international, membership not-for-profit behind much of TeX (since 1980). It publishes the TUGboat journal, runs annual conferences, and supports development (including TeX Live); joining supports the ecosystem. The Japanese TeX Development Community (texjporg) maintains the Japanese toolchain — pLaTeX/upLaTeX, jsclasses (originally by Haruhiko Okumura), dvipdfmx’s Japanese support, gentombow, ptex2pdf, and more — and runs the TeX Wiki (texwiki.texjp.org). It is the hub for Japanese TeX.
Where to ask and read
- TeX Stack Exchange (tex.stackexchange.com) — the definitive TeX/LaTeX Q&A, with a huge archive; search here first.
- TeX Wiki (texwiki.texjp.org) and Okumura’s TeX forum (okumuralab.org/tex/) — the main Japanese-language resources.
- The latex.org forum, the mailing list (
[email protected]), and r/LaTeX on Reddit. - For bugs and requests, each package’s GitHub; for LaTeX itself, the LaTeX Project (latex-project.org).
How to ask well
The biggest boost to getting answered: include a minimal working example (MWE) — the shortest self-contained .tex that reproduces the problem. State the engine, distribution, and package versions you used, and paste the full error (and the .log if relevant). And search first — someone has usually been there already.