Customer Reviews

LaTeX Line by Line: Tips and Techniques for Document Processing

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

 

 

I've recently been through most of the beginning to intermediate LaTeX books and have found the bulk of them almost worthless in helping to learn and use LaTeX. This book is extremely readable and useful with correct syntax. The focus is unapologetically LaTeX2e and is not encumbered with outdated 2.09 commands. This is hands down the one book I would buy if I were only going to buy one. After this I would recommend Kopka, though that is much less well presented but definitely the next best (it is loaded with superfluous 2.09 command comparisons which just get in the way of getting through the book). It is way down hill after that, including Lamport's book (beautifully typeset but not clearly written).

In the TeX/LaTeX universe, I've found that you get the program for free, but then you wind up buying $200 worth of books to learn the program because no one textbook is all things to all people. This is hands down the best "introductory book." It's easy to read and gives you enough information to start up quickly. Hahn's book is outdated with its coverage of Latex 2.09, and Kopka's, while having lots of good stuff in it (if you can find it), reads like a scientific text translated from a foreign language--which it is.

If you want to start getting productive with LaTeX immediately, get this book.

This book is well written and is great for anyone trying to put together reports and simple documents with no frills (base fonts and formatting). It does not cover font selection (NFSS), customization, and many other important things for advanced documents, like a book. If you need a much more comprehensive book for LaTeX I would recommend Kopka's book. The book is structured in a very confusing and sometimes illogical manner, but it covers much more. This book is much more efficient, but you may find yourself needing more.

My copy of this book is well worn, dog earned, and filled with enough paper clips to set off airport alarms. It has well over half a pad of pink post it notes extending from its pages. Several Xerox copies of book pages hang from my desk for quick reference. I would never go back to L*****'s book!

It was Diller's manuscript that allowed me to publish my dissertation with LaTeX in a timely fashion with minimal headache (from text processing!).

Pure TeX geeks will shun this book. It's too readable and too practical. If you want to hack away your grad school days solving Knuth's TeX programming exercises, this book is not for you.

Purchase this book if you actually want to get some productive work done with LaTeX!

I bought this book based on the other reviews but I have to say I found it somewhat dense reading and hard to get through. I'm sure it's packed with good information, but I think the layout is daunting and not "user friendly." I much prefer the formatting, layout and style of "Math Into LaTeX".

I agree with the previous review. Among other nice touches the book contains a descriptive list of all LaTeX commands. This alone made it worth the money for me.