Customer Reviews

LaTeX: A Document Preparation System (2nd Edition)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Leslie Lamport's second edition of the Latex manual is helpful, concise, and puts ideas first; it's a great book for the TeX beginner. All essentially topics are covered quickly, in an engaging style.

However, it has two drawbacks. First, the reference section is cryptic and confusing; I recommend keeping the Latex Companion handy for detailed explanations and examples.

Second, too many useful things are left unsaid. For instance, nowhere in this book is it stated that \to is a built-in abbreviation for the clumsy command \rightarrow (the arrow in A -> B); most users waste time making their own abbreviation, such as \ra. But \to is right there in the Latex source, it's simply not documented in this manual. The MakeIndex appendix explains the \index command in detail, but omits to mention the \glossary command (you'll find it in paragraph C.11.5 of the reference section, if you're desperate). The all-important business of add-on "packages", which allow endless customizations of the standard Latex styles, is dealt with in only one or two pages. And so on...

The manual doesn't tell the reader that its style conventions are not obligatory. Thus, curly brackets are pervasive: to type a subscripted list of variables, the book suggests $x_{1},\ldots,x_{n}$. It takes quite a while for the beginner to realize that $x_1,\dots,x_n$ works just as well (and gives the same result). A simple explanation of what is an "input token" would save users a lot of time and trouble.

Final answer? You'll need this book: it's a good book, and it's authorative, correct and concise. But if you need to know more than the basics, make sure you also have the Latex Companion.

LaTeX is a powerful typesetting program, and you need a book to use it (unlike Word). Lamport's book is not a bad choice, but it's not great either. It's well written and has a very good index, but it deals only with the 'defaults', that is, documents written in English following certain (sometimes stupid) formatting conventions.

For instance, if you want to write in, say, Spanish or French, Lamport tells you to type \'{e} to get an accented 'e'. I later discovered through a friend that by adding \usepackage[latin1]{inputenc} in the preamble, you can type accented letters normally. This is only one example. There are many useful things not covered in the book, and I find this annoying. It seems one book is not enough for LaTeX.

Eventually, you'll want to modify some of the formatting conventions in LaTeX, and for that you'll have to 'hack' TeX macros or write them from scratch. Lamport contains only scant advice on this. I was annoyed to find that you can't imitate the book's style (e.g. horizontal rules in the headers) using the commands described in the book. Even LaTeX 'packages' (extensions such as the 'amsmath' style file) are of limited use.

However, I must say that none of the other LaTeX books I've seen is very good. My advice is this: buy Lamport as a tutorial and reference on 'standard' LaTeX, and look for 'extra' information in the net or on your own LaTeX distribution. Even better is to ask an experienced user. As your experience grows, you'll be able to modify the TeX macros in LaTeX's source code to suit your needs.

We TeX-heads (with apologies to Knuth that I didn't say TeXnicians) should all bow to Lamport for his LaTeX package, a masterpiece of macro programming and design. That said, while you'll need a copy of this book with its handy tear-out card as a reference, it is not the best way to learn LaTeX. For that you need "LaTeX Line by Line" by Diller. The problem here is that Lamport created the package, but he hasn't organized the material very well to explain it. I remember back when I first encountered LaTeX (circa 1987) and tried to learn it with only the first edition of this book. That was truly an excercise in futility. It's much easier to come up to speed by NOT using Lamport's book as your primer. But go ahead, buy the book. You'll need the command reference and that little fold-out card... .

If you are a LaTeX beginner and need to learn the basics, this is probably the best way to do it. Please disregard the low scores given to this book by other reviewers who were disappinted by the level of detail. (Since I am an author of an introductory book myself, this sort of thoughtless on the part of those reviewers really irritates me. A book isn't a bad book just because you didn't read the book description and you thought it was going to be about something else.) The book has a specific purpose, as an introduction and a reference for the base LaTeX packages. It's only 288 pages (compare to The LaTeX Companion at 1120 pages, or Guide to LaTeX at 624 pages). The reference section it has is a reference for the base LaTeX software, not all of the hundreds of packages that have been written for it since 1994 when the book was published. I give it a five star rating for the purpose it was written.

If you want an exhaustive reference to all the packages, try The LaTeX Companion (or dig around on the internet). If you want an excellent introduction to basic LaTeX, the numerous tutorials on the Internet are *not* as good as this book.

There is one very important missing piece from this book - there aren't any key-by-key instructions. That's because LaTeX is used on so many different systems. So an absolute beginner might be surprised to find this information missing. Luckily, this is exactly the sort of information that is more easily found on the Internet.

I started using LaTeX (and TeX) over 15 years ago. I was dissatisfied with the way that Word handled equations (it didn't then) and sought software that would typeset my technical text and mathematics well. A friend and colleague introduced me to LaTeX. I bought a copy of Lamport's book, a PC port of the software, and started using LaTeX to set my work.

I've been using LaTeX ever since. I use it for everything I write, with the exception of a few works that require me to use Word, either because my colleagues use it or the research sponsor requires it. Recently, one of my principal research sponsors began accepting PDF format reports, so I may escape one more instance of using Word. That pleases me. But, I digress.

LaTeX is a set of macros (programs) that implement a variety of styles in the TeX language. Use of LaTeX is through a number of mark-up commands (in the same fashion that web documents are set with HTML mark-up) that are applied to textual elements of a document. Most of your LaTeX documents comprise your text. A small amount of text will be allocated to LaTeX mark-up.

This book provides the necessary instruction for learning to use LaTeX. It is written for technical users, but not computer experts. That is, Lamport expects the users of the software to have a technical background because that's the goal of the software -- to set technical documents. But he doesn't expect the reader to be a computer expert.

The book is manageable in length too. It is not so long as to require multiple sittings to work through it. Once familiar with the content, it is fairly easy to find what you are looking for in the text. The index is complete and useful. When using Lamport, I'm reminded of Kernighan and Ritchie (The C Programming Language) -- Lamport has a similar kind of easy flow to the text.

While the material is not easy, Lamport's book does a good job of conveying use of a highly technical piece of software in a readable fashion. If you are going to use LaTeX, you will want a copy of this book. You will also want a copy of Mittelbach and others LaTeX Companion (2nd edition) to help use the plethora of add-on packages available for LaTeX.

So, download a install of TeX (and LaTeX -- Google the TeX User's Group) for your computer, buy a copy of Lamport (and Mittelbach and others), read through Lamport, and start playing with LaTeX. If you write technical documents that require mathematics, you'll find LaTeX very useful. When you find yourself writing longer documents, the ability to automatically generate tables of contents, lists of figures and tables, bibliographies, and indices will make the software all the more valuable and the time invested learning to use it well-spent.

Welcome to the world of LaTeX. Don't forget to join the TeX User's Group and support development of the software!

I thought I hated LaTeX - in truth, I hated this book. This book gets you started and then frustrates you. I believe the author tried to be concise and cut too much. After struggling with this book for way too long, I bought Kopka and Daly's "A Guide to LaTeX", which a great book; it has a good introduction for beginners and serves as a great reference for experts. Skip the pain I went through and just get Kopka and Daly.

I never thought Lamport's first edition was any good. This edition for latex2e is worse. Many of latex2e's additions are treated poorly (e.g. the new font mechanism).

Lamport wrote the first book on latex, and even though it wasn't a great book, it had the advantage of being both the first and the authoritative guide. As far as latex2e is concerned, Lamport ignores so many new developments, so many new issues that this book seems like a quick hack of the first edition. No serious treatment of the new font mechanism, no mention of some of the important packages that now exist for latex, no treatment of foreign languages, superficial treatment of graphics, and no discussion of advanced math formatting issues.

The book probably deserves two stars but gets only one because of the gall of re-packaging and selling something that's so very close to the first edition.

Don't waste your money on it (I got my copy as a gift, and will gladly pass it on to the first person that sends me a self-addressed, stamped envelope). If you need a good book on latex2e, consider the Latex Companion.

Much like K&R's "C Programming Language", economy (and precision) of words characterize this book. There's little fat or fluff in this slim volume but is packed with usable information. And, as one might expect, it is beautifully typeset. Don't let the aging copyright deter you, if you're serious about document processing, this is one book you need to add to your collection. Thanks to Lamport, I have used LaTeX to prepare professional-quality documenation giving little (if any) thought to how it looks so that I can concentrate on clarity and content.

Leslie Lamport's often cited "Latex" book is an adequate guide to this document preparation system. The problem with this book is that it's slightly too complicated (and dated) for absolute beginners (when I was learning Latex, I tried to read this book but couldn't and ended up using "The Not So Short Introduction to Latex" - available on the internet, instead), while not being detailed enough for more advanced users. At only 272, there just isn't enough there to be of much use. I also own a copy of The LaTeX Companion (Tools and Techniques for Computer Typesetting) and I find that I use that book far more often than this one. This book is adequate if there is nothing else for you to look at, but there are better books out there that you can spend your money on.

As a person fairly new to TeX, I found this book most helpful. I made a surprising discovery this summer while working with professional scientists who write almost everything in LaTex: many of them used this book, too! It, along with it's companions, are THE reference for many of these scientists. The one shortcoming of this, as well as every LaTeX guide I have seen, is that it doesn't explain how to include external postscript graphics at all, something we all need to do, it seems.