Guide to LATEX, A: Document Preparation for Beginners and Advanced Users, 2nd Edition

I've been using LaTeX for over five years (cut my eyeteeth on TeX, though, thank you very much). I've just signed on to help typeset a calculus textbook, and knew that it was time to get serious about programming. I had a 3 inch stack of documentation from various corners of the internet in my office, but no book that I had paid for--my old LaTeX book from circa 1994 had been stolen.

I was all set to buy two books--Lamport's original and The LaTeX Ccmpanion. After all, you wouldn't read another TeX book but Knuth's, would you? Then I saw this book.

Though certainly not for the advanced programmer (like, on the .cls level), this book is great for the beginning programmer (creating .sty files) and intermediate user (hacking .sty files). The reference bits are very useful--"What's the syntax of that command again?" But the examples in the earlier part of the book are even better for programming-by-plaigiarism. There's even a bit on docstrip so you can... Read more

Any book that claims to cater for beginners and advanced users alike has quite a task ahead of it and I don't believe this guide to LaTeX does justice to either category of user.

The true nature of this 616 page beast is spelt out in chapter 1, where the reader is advised that the book "is designed for LaTeX users who have little or no experience with computers" and that there exists "considerable repetition in the text". Unless you have a solid week to spare and the memory of a gold fish this book has the potential to be incredibly frustrating. Instead of being immersed in worthwhile examples demonstrating the true power of LaTeX, the reader is forced to trawl through paragraph after paragraph of verbose explanation. Worse still, with minimal imagination employed in presentation, the fact that this book was typeset using LaTeX doesn't inspire confidence - helpful hints supposedly written in a smaller typeface to make them distinct, simply disappear into the sea... Read more

I use LaTeX on a daily basis and wrote a textbook (Numerical Methods for Physics) using it. With a bookshelf full of LaTeX books, this is always the first one I look at and 98% of the time, the only one I need. Excellent. (Note: Review for Second Edition)