Customer Reviews

LaTeX Graphics Companion, The (2nd Edition)

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This book covers in one chapter (Chapter 2) the standard LaTex interfaces for embedding graphic objects in a LaTex document. Most, if not all, of this material is covered identically in the authors' other book "The LaTex Companion" and even in the 15-year-old LaTex 'bible', "LaTex User's Guide and Reference Manual" by Lamport.

Virtually the entire remainder of the Graphics Companion is a one-by-one synopsis of various add-on packages for LaTex, and essentially all of this material can be obtained free by downloading docs for the respective packages from the internet. Further, many of the packages covered in the Graphics Companion involve the user writing raw Postscript, a curiously old-fashioned, or at least unnecessarily geeky, approach. Raw Postscript for graphics has largely been superseded by the use of software such as Matlab, Mathematica, Maple, and Mathtype that produce cut and pastable graphic output that can be inserted intact into a LaTex document with a simple \includegraphics command - about all the average current LaTex user needs to know from a graphics standpoint. I'm not familiar with the publication requirements of the research world outside of engineering and math, but I can't imagine that other disciplines haven't evolved similar tools with cut and paste graphical capabilities.

Huge sections of the Graphics Companion are devoted to MusixTex and various game description (chess, Sudoku, etc.) packages - choices that seem to have been made because (perhaps) there were available doc files that could be used (with permission) essentially intact.

So, although apparently extensively researched and competently written, the Graphics Companion seems to be not much more than a catalog and compendium of docs, and difficult to justify at the price. Some time spent on one of the LaTex forums will lead to at least as much useful information as this book.

Like The LaTeX Companion (Tools and Techniques for Computer Typesetting), "The LaTeX Graphics Companion" is loaded with valuable information from beginning to end (925 pages in total). This time, the focus of the book is on the various graphics packages that are available in LaTeX including:
*Metafont, Metapost and Metaobj;
*PSTricks (including pst-plot, pst-node, pst-tree, pst-fill, pst-3d and pst-3dplot);
*XY-pic;
*MusiXTeX (which is used for preparing music scores)
*Packages for typesetting science, technology and medicine formulae and diagrams; and
*Packages for typesetting games (influding chess, cards, etc).

Each package is described thoroughly, through the use of numerous examples and I doubt there is a more detailed manual to these packages available anywhere. However, be aware that this book assumes a working knowledge of LaTeX (if you haven't already purchased it, I recommend you buy "The LaTeX Companion" as well as this book). Also, I found that I could not obtain some of the graphics packages described in this book and I found that when I started learning PSTricks, I needed to look at some online tutorials as well as this book, in order to learn the basics. Goosens et al. are not good at describing things to absolute beginners, but are good once you get beyond that.

I purchased the LaTeX Graphics Companion, The (2nd Edition) while learning LaTeX to use to prepare materials for use while teaching high school geometry. This is an excellent resource providing both descriptions of the macros and examples for a number of LaTeX graphic packages. It's coverage of the PSTricks packages along with its separate index have been especially helpful.

This is an absolute must for all people seriously interested in all kinds of graphics produced with LaTeX, that is with the most efficient typesetting system of the world.
Luciano Battaia

This book together with "The LaTex Companion" represents the state of the art of any manuals for LaTeX. The book is well written and it is comprehensible even to beginners . It shows all the major feature of the most common graphics packages. The most important thing is the all the packages are free available from [...] .
A really good guide for who is interested in producing high quality document and wants to write once and export in many formats.
It's a pity that there is no cd-rom media included.

The second edition of the LaTeX Graphics Companion, along the second edition of the LaTeX Companion, are essential resources for LaTeX users. When one first starts using LaTeX, you need one of the commercial books or free on-line books that provide an introduction and overview of LaTeX. Right after that you need the nearly comprehensive Companion books, written by the on-going developers and maintainers of LaTeX.