Customer Reviews

The LaTeX Companion (Tools and Techniques for Computer Typesetting)

5 star:		(24)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Pocket Review: *The* bible to keep on your desk if you use LaTex.

I love type. Ever since I got into computers, back when high resolution was a 132 column printer, I've tried to find ways to play with typesetting and fonts. I wrote a basic layout system in OMSI Pascal that drove daisywheel printers. I got to be quite an expert at nroff and troff. I used to hunt (without success) for a free copy of Scribe. I played with Lout, and a dozen other packages. But nothing, ever, held a candle to TeX when it comes to the quality of the output it produces.

Ignore for the moment some of the uglier fonts than some TeX users employ, and look instead at the pages. Hold them up at a distance and admire the uniformity of the gray: no rivers of white to be seen. Look at the bottoms of the page: if the typesetter didn't totally goof off, they'll be vertically balanced: an open spread is
the same height on both pages (TeX'll add tiny amounts of leading to make it happen). Dig into the line-breaking, and you'll find optimization algorithms, which shuffle words back and forth trying to minimize the <em>badness</em> of the appearance.

The output of TeX gives me a lot of pleasure.

Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for its input. Don Knuth is clearly a genius, but as with all wizards, his creations can be tricky. In the case of TeX, we have a typesetting engine driven by a macro processor whose interpretation of syntax can be changed while it is in the middle of processing individual commands. Raw TeX is scary to deal with, so people don't deal with it. Instead, they use its power to write macro packages, abstracting the low level commands into something more palatable (and tractable). The most widely used of these is Leslie Lamport's LaTeX. LaTeX is at its heart a logical mark up system, documented in an admirably short and lucid book, <em>LaTeX: A Document Preparation System.</em>

But when you want to use LaTeX to do serious work, you need more than this small book. When you want to set complex tables, or handle floating material a certain way, or get your index looking just right, you need the real scoop. And you turn to just one book.

The original <em>LaTeX Companion</em> was one of those books that never got returned to my bookshelf. I used it almost every day for 4 years during the typesetting of five books. Thanks to its wealth of detail, I was able to create press-ready files straight from my computer to the exacting specification of the production departments of three separate printers.

But now, that worn old book has been retired. Mittlebach and Goossens have
produced a second edition of <em>The LaTeX Companion,</em> and it's better in every possible way. In the ten years since the first was published, a lot has changed, and the book captures it all. New packages, improvements in encodings, font handling, xindy: the book describes it all. My copy arrived a couple of weeks before
Mike Clark's <em>Pragmatic Project Automation</em> book was due to go to the printers. I devoured it, and immediately used its advice to improve the appearance of ragged-right text, fix up some font issues in the code listings, and improve the handling of included graphics. Since then, it's been a true companion as I've worked with the typesetting of the new edition of <em>Programming Ruby</em>.

I don't often gush, but if you use LaTeX, or if you'd just like to produce great looking typeset output, you owe it to yourself to get this book.

This is, by far, the most useful book I own. The first edition was great, the second edition is nothing short of spectacular. The two-color print is very helpful. Compared to the first edition, which I've been using for just about seven years, the updated package descriptions in the new edition improved my typesetting substantially within only a few days after I got it. Well worth it's price. I hope the authors make a good buck on this, since they are making my life so much easier.

The stated intention of the book not withstanding, I think this is all you'll ever need to use LaTeX, no matter how serious a user you are. Well, maybe a two-page primer of the basic commands in addition. Anyway, I've never used Kopka's book and I never touched Lamport's. Not because they're bad, but because I never had to.

The one small issue I have with the second edition: where did the cute pooch on the cover go?

I have been a TeX/LaTeX user since 1982, and have authored several classes and styles (newlfm). I just got my copy of the new The LaTeX Companion (2nd Edition). I just love it!! Why? 942 pages of text, 94 pages of the index (YEP!), wonderfully clear examples, 136 pages on fonts, a whole appendix on debugging, 72 pp on mathematics, etc. The book is well-written and uses clearly distinct fonts for user commands, internal commands, etc. There are 138 pages about fonts. In the mathematics chapter, there are 104 examples in the Math chapter alone; one REALLY COOL section shows 10 different font choices and their impact on the typesetting of a small page of mathematics. HOT STUFF!!

In short, there is only 1 limitation to the book: It does not have LaTeX/TeX lion on the front. That is hard to accept. However, everything else is really good. I highly recommend this.

The second edition of The LaTeX Companion is a thorough rewrite of the first edition. If you're seeking a single source for improving your LaTeX documents (in ways you never imagined), this is your book. It is really a tour de force in technical documentation and clearly a labor of love from its numerous authors. The extensive coverage of packages and the examples are very useful. In addition, every example is provided in the CD that comes with the manual. The CD also includes a complete LaTeX installation. You will not find a better text for working with LaTeX and I highly recommend it.

PS I've been using LaTeX since 1990 and am familiar with all the principal manuals.

I'm in the throes of writing a large report and decided to use LaTeX to handle the document processing for me. (Yes, I should be working, but I decided to take a respite and write this review!) I use LaTeX all the time to produce the short documents necessary for teaching classes, so I'm literate. But this is the first large writing project I've managed entirely in LaTeX.

This review refers to the second edition of "The LaTeX Companion."

It's difficult to write a review beyond "This is a great book--buy it!" There is so much contained within The Companion that any review will fall short. So, allow me to take a slightly different tack. I have two books on my desk right next to my workstation. Lamport's "LaTeX: A Document Preparation Guide, 2nd Edition" and Mittelbach, et al.'s "The LaTeX Companion, 2nd Edition." (My discipline-specific texts and papers are scattered all over everywhere--typical professor mode.) I use Lamport's book for quick reference for math symbols and table setup (Lamport is much less hefty...) and The Companion for reference on everything else. The Companion is full of details necessary to get "the details" right.

The Companion is well-written, well-indexed, well-organized, and contains a compilation of information not available anywhere else for users of LaTeX. You will not be able to use the packages and extensions necessary to make the writing job easier without The Companion. Trust me--if you are writing using LaTeX, then you need this text for access to instructions for using the packages necessary, and desirable, for production of technical text.

I cannot imagine developing another complex document without LaTeX and the two texts I use. A actually have two copies of both texts (LaTeX and The Companion), one at the office and one at home. I can't imagine writing in LaTeX without them both. But, if I had to chose just one book, I'd have to chose The Companion. It's that simple and that necessary.

This is an amazing piece of work. It's obviously a well refined second edition where the authors have listened to the readers and understand how to present this very deep information in a lightweight informative way. I can't imagine any more material that could be poured into this book. Which isn't to say that the book is a dumping ground of material, what is in there is all well organized and integrated.

What's more, the formatting of the book itself stands as an example of design to be aspired to.

This is a phenomenal piece of work. It gets my highest recommendation. This is a fantastic book for anyone who uses TeX seriously. For those looking to start with TeX you should probably AW's Guide To LaTeX as well as this book.

If you use LaTeX --- and if you want to create nice looking documents you probably should --- then you'll want this book.

This book is well organized and well written. The information is presented very clearly and with many examples. While it is fun to browse through, it is also easy to find any specific information that you're looking for. And any information on LaTeX that you want will almost certainly be in here; the book is quite comprehensive. I had expected the book to cost much more than it does, particularly given how much it covers; I was pleasantly surprised at how inexpensive it is.

While it isn't a tutorial for someone who's never used LaTeX before, anyone who uses LaTeX for non-trivial documents will find themselves leafing through this book

First off, this book is great and up-to-date expansion of the 1st edition, but I'll agree with some other posters who maintain that the book is difficult to navigate... unless you already have a pretty good idea of what you are looking for. It contains clear descriptions and short examples for nearly every topic discussed, but very few longer examples. This book is definitely not for those that have never used LaTeX and are trying to learn the basics for the first time and/or want lots of long, complete, and well commented examples.

To be fair, that's not what this book is about. It is definitely targeted at those with some LaTeX experience. However, it would be a 5 star book with the simple addition of separate indexes for "commands" and "concepts" (which are combined into one 96 page index) and the addition of a few pages devoted to a basic "getting started" chapter with some longer and complete document examples.

That being said; there are a number of very good online "getting started" materials available (and/or linked) from the authors web site as well as from numerous other web sites and user groups. It would just be nice to have some of those materials included in the text for completeness. However, once the basics are learned, I don't think there is anything LaTeX related that I would ever need that's missing from this text (aside from some brief coverage of metafont/metapost perhaps -- just in an appendix or something -- but I know that's probably getting way out scope).

UPDATE: I've since purchased: Guide to LaTeX (4th Edition) by Helmut Kopka and Patrick W. Daly which makes the perfect accompaniment to this book. The Guide to LaTeX covers all of the "basics" that are left out of The LaTeX Companion (which covers more advanced topics). Even though they are by different authors, they work very well together. I'm currently writing my doctoral dissertation and -- as a pair -- they're the only LaTeX documentation I really ever use.

I have been using LaTeX for a few years now, but there always seem to be things that I don't know how to do (use the wingdings font) or can't get to look quite right (complex, multicolumn tables). I have some other LaTeX reference books that have helped, but this one seems to better than the rest. I really like the way the examples are presented. The examples are complete and very easy to use. I sometimes have a hard time finding exactly what I want via the index, but the index tends to at least put me in the right ballpark.

The book does cover the basics of vanilla LaTeX, but it also does a very good job of talking about the important CTAN packages. I think this is a good move as the authors have decided to present things in the simplest way even if it means using a 3rd party package. I generally don't want to spend time searching for a good CTAN package, but here the authors have done this work for me. It is nice.

I would have liked to see a bit more about LaTeX graphics in this book, but I guess that is what The LaTeX Graphics Companion is for. Can we get an update to that book?

An up-to-date reference for experienced LaTeX users. This book does NOT contain an introduction to LaTeX. Rather, it assumes that the reader has a working LaTeX system and has written some documents before. The value of the book lies in its breadth of coverage. There is a solution for just about any LaTeX problem I can think of. Mostly, the solutions consist of a recommendation for some third-party LaTeX package (style file) and a short review of its use. But the book also covers some quite esoteric issues in-depth. For example, it contains the only introduction to BiBTeX style file programming that I'm aware of.

An indispensable resource for serious LaTeX writing for those with high standards for their typesetting.