Guide to LaTeX (4th Edition)
Posted By : jizzy | Date : 25 Aug 2009 10:11:54 | Comments : 0
Helmut Kopka, Patrick W. Daly, "Guide to LaTeX (4th Edition)"
Addison-Wesley Professional 2003 | ISBN-10: 0321173856 | 624 pages | PDF | 2,9 MB
Reader's review:
For anyone coming to LaTeX from a background in mathematics many sources of help are available, but it is more difficult for someone coming to it from a feeling of dissatisfaction with the results obtainable with typical WYSIWYG word processors. When you are surrounded by people who think that Word is wonderful and that its equation editor can handle any equations you need, getting to the point with LaTeX where you can use it to advantage may seem more trouble than it is worth. You will probably start with Leslie Lamport's "LaTeX: a document preparation system", but although that is a good and authoritative start it is not really enough, as there is a great deal more to know than can be found in a short book, and in particular you need to know about all that is now available in the form of packages.
Fortunately there are some excellent sources of more detailed information, and two of these stand out: Kopka and Daly's "Guide to LaTeX" and Mittelbach and Goossens's "LaTeX Companion". I acquired both of these about six months ago, but decided to defer posting reviews until I had discovered by experience which of them I actually used more, and the winner is clearly Kopka and Daly, mainly because it is much the easier to find one's way around. It is quite adequate as a complete guide to LaTeX (i.e. you don't really need to start with Lamport, though it's probably a good idea if you do), as the opening chapter on "basics" really is about basics, and the book progresses from there in a reasonably gentle way..