Customer Reviews

Guide to LaTeX (4th Edition)

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

There are easier introductions to LaTeX (including many on-line from various university courses) but when it comes to doing difficult things this is the book. I have both the German version (3 volumes) and the 3rd English version of this. Typical German thoroughness -- a very extensive index, lists of commands and symbols, clear and concise explanations. As another reviewer says, it's not for the beginner. You can indeed learn LaTeX from this book (first several chapters are simpler) but it is oriented to the person using LaTeX all the time. Especially nice are the detailed explanations of tables, page layout, math mode (both standard LaTeX and AMSLaTeX). There's no disguising that it takes time and effort to get into LaTeX, but the results are well worth it. When you have a difficult usage question, this book will help you find the answer in minimum time.

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..

This is a great book. I found it much easier to read than the other LaTeX books I looked at, most of which, in my opinion, are very poorly written. I came to rely on it very heavily as I wrote my thesis, and am very glad that I bought it. For more reviews on the book, do a search for "kopka daly latex" in the standard amazon search box. There are 23 reviews for the third edition, which should be relevant to this edition.

For starting out in Latex, I recommend one of the many free online tutorials, such as the "not-so-short introduction to Latex". That will get you more than started. This book is a great add-on reference to that, and the level is just right: not too wordy, but easy to follow. It has much deeper coverage of how to do graphics and drawings, how to create a bibliography, how to create postscript and pdf files, etc, in addition to the basics, of course.

I think that this book is a great reference for those that have already some familiarity with Latex. It covers pretty much any aspect that one needs to be effective in Latex. One of the best parts about this book is that there is an appendix which has the syntax of most commands in Latex. I do not own the third edition but I have done a side by side comparison of it with the fourth edition. In general the material all the same minus some formatting differences. I noticed that one chapter did not make it from the third edition to the fourth which was on class writing. Instead a chpater on modifying pre-existing classes was included.
If you already own the third edition, then this may not be as substantial revision to warrant the purchase of this edition, but I do like the new layout of this edition compared to the third.

BEWARE. I do not think that this is best book for those begining Latex. Instead, I recommend "Learning Latex" by D. F. Griffiths and D. J. Higham. This book has the Latex code written right next to how it would appear.

This is an ideal introduction to the TeX line of text formatting tools. It starts with a high level overview of the toolset. Then dives into document construction, then into tables, lists, mathematical formatting, and into user constructions and extensions for bibliographies, as well as other topics. PDF and Postscript formatting is covered. As well as AMS-TeX which is more extensions or mathematical formatting.

On the downside the substance of the text is only two-thirds of the book. Appendices make up the rest. Which necessarily means that the coverage is a little more terse than you would expect for a book this size.

That being said, this is still an excellent introduction to the TeX set of tools for anyone who is just starting out.

I have been using this book a lot, in the recent months, and I am finding it very useful. I am not *at all* an expert latex user, but I do have decent programming skills, and I usually use a computer for hours every day, so my IT skills are decent, overall. For writing technical documents I have been using for years a fairly dated version of ScientificWorkplace, but I am now slowly switching to do more and more in latex, which gives me greater flexibility. What I usually do now is writing my documents in ScientificWorkplace, and then taking care of formatting and other unusual features editing the documents in Latex, through a program called WinEdt. In almost all cases, when I am in trouble with some commands or options, I find a clear solution in this book. For this reason, if your profile sounds a bit like mine, I would highly recommend this book. The new (fourth) edition also includes extensive references to the "hyperref" package, which is very very useful to create great pdf output that includes links to footnotes/sections/equations etc., bookmarks, and active buttons.

I've been working in LaTeX for approximately 2 years. I received an initial 40 minute session of the very basics and then have supplemented these basics by other students' knowledge and web searches. There have always been questions that I was unclear about how to search for -- for instance, how to make a make an automatically adjusting reference to a figure (the reference changes if the figure number changes) -- but I was completely unsure of where to find this information. These miscellaneous problems are the ones that this book is helping me with, although it also has what I would consider a very thorough introduction to each topic.

Having some background in LaTeX, I've started out using the book by taking about 10-20 minutes skimming each chapter and noting what each contains and making notes. While I can't say I can do everything I want without going back for a good read, when I have tried something new using this book I've been relatively successful and in relatively short time. Since I have a single page (which I keep in the book) with notes of where particular topics I might use are noted, using this book has been very very convenient. Getting a book like this and reviewing/skimming it, IMO, is comparable to why one would use LaTeX. We use LaTeX because, in the long run, it saves time. Likewise, I'm happy I finally bought this book because the time I've invested in looking it over will be recovered since now I can do things in LaTeX faster (and they look better!).

As for the layout and book structure, I'm very pleased. Each topic has just enough information to decipher the nuances of using LaTeX but rarely too much that it feels redundant. The liberal use of subsections is also convenient, making it easy to flip through a chapter and see what is in it and where.

While some people might read this book word-for-word and/or do the exercises, I think a better way to use the book is as a quick intro to each topic (via skimming) and then as a reference when actually doing the problems when they come up. If I was a more patient person, I'd do the exercises, however, I am afraid that even then I will need to reference the book on the topic anyways. At present, I look at exercises just to see what I should be able to do.

Unlike those of us with some time in LaTeX, someone completely new to LaTeX would no doubt need to read at least a few chapters fully through and play around in LaTeX a lot. I'm not sure there is any other option for someone new to LaTeX; LaTeX has a steep learning curve in the world of document editors so I would imagine no book would truly make learning LaTeX easy. (What might be useful for a new user to LaTeX would be a document with a large number of text forms, tables, figures, etc to use to learn by example. This book does not have this and I am uncertain whether any LaTeX books do.)

Some topics I've found in this book that I previously did not know how to do but that I will put to use:
* inserting paragraphs in tables
* floating graphics within text (this is addressed in the chapter AFTER graphics are introduced)
* framing/boxing equations or text
* footnotes within tables
* suppressing hyphenation
* automatically adjusting references to figures, tables, etc.
* user defined environments or commands
* create a table of contents & a bibliography
* ... much much more (I've only reviewed the easier 2/3rds of the book).

As for whether I'm going to go one step further and get The LaTeX Companion? At the moment I feel no need for anything with more detail. I think this book will be (more than) sufficient for me to write articles, papers, short books, and miscellaneous documents. Unless you are familiar with many of the items above, you will probably benefit from just sticking to this book and that is my intention. At the very least, you may peak at the table of contents of The LaTeX Companion via InformIT website. The Guide to LaTeX covers comparable topics to The LaTeX Companion.

On the topic of other books, I've also peaked at The LaTeX Graphics Companion, which had far more info on graphics than I needed. However, if you intend to make lots of figures for physics, chemistry, or any other purpose, this book would probably be of use. The Guide to LaTeX really only covers math and very limited efforts in drawing pictures.

*** Update (5/11/09). Still using this book on a regular basis; I look one thing or another up every few days. I recently taught an Intro to LaTeX mini-course and used this book as a guide as I compiled sections. (If you want the mini-course slides and a LaTeX document with plenty of examples, search UCLA Statistical Consulting Center and look in the mini-course section.) I also picked up the LaTeX Graphics Companion but haven't yet used it much. I imagine I'll use it a bit more as I get more serious with making figures in LaTeX but it hasn't been as convenient as I anticipated.

As many reviewers have noted, this book is a poor choice for those seeking an introduction to LaTeX. However, I find that I rarely use it as a reference either; it often takes me much longer to find information in this book than on the internet. The index is horribly designed, using the same index for concepts and commands. Finding something in this book feels like finding something in code.

Having read the third edition, the fourth provides necessary updated information on using features such as pdfTeX, html and removing some of the information on the older versions of LaTeX. There is a learning curve with using LaTex that cannot be avoided, but this book provides a good introduction to beginniners.