Customer Reviews

The Latex Companion (Addison-Wesley Series on Tools and Techniques for Computer T)

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

First, a remark on the title: this is not a companion to theprogram, but rather a companion to some other book on LaTeX you shouldhave. I bought this book back in 1994, when it was the first book onLaTeX2e, and by now it is thoroughly worn (though the binding is still doing its job well :). However, at the time I bought it, I have already been using LaTeX for six years, and have read Lamport's guide (which is charming, and also the book The Companion intends to accompany) and Kopka and Daly's (which is better organized and more complete).

The LaTeX Companion is something between an advanced course tutorial (could just as well be named Selected Chapters from LaTeX) and a reference book. None of them was ever aimed at beginners, and this one is no exception. LaTeX comes with a rich legacy of add-on macro packages doing various useful and nifty things with lists, floats, tables, formulas, graphics, fonts, indices and bibliographies. This book covers some of them. I would love to see second edition of this book covering more of them. There is a treasure hidden at CTAN, but it is usually hard to find it. The examples are well chosen and it is easy to learn from them. I am less pleased with the index. At 36 pages, it looks very promising, but it rarely led me to the place I sought. During years of use, I mostly figured out where in a book things are, and stopped using it.

Despite the confusing index, the book is worth its (admittedly high) price and you will probably learn many useful things from it. The idea of a thin tutorial and a partly-overlapping "companion book" doesn't appeal to me, though. Personally, I would prefer one single book with a complete treatment of the topic.

The bottom line is: This is the most useful book on latex2e that I own. I use it all the time. This is not a great book, but there aren't many good books on latex2e and this is probably the best or close to best there is.

There aren't good books on latex; there are very few good books on tex. People don't buy these books because they're fun or interesting, or make good reading, but because they need to get things done and they want the book to show them how. The latex companion will show you how to get things done. If you need to typeset latex documents often, probably "pure latex" in itself won't be enough for you, and the book will make you aware of this fact: It surveys some of the more useful packages for doing useful things: long tables, inserting and manipulating graphics, etc. Once you get the hang of going over to CTAN, checking for useful packages that do the stuff you need, downloading and installing them, you'll be "on your own" and will be able to progress independently. I haven't found a need for another latex manual beyond the Latex Companion, though an O'Reilly pocket reference for tex and latex would have been great! (O'Reilly: Are you reading this???) There are some subjects it doesn't treat well, like foreign languages in latex, but otherwise, it's fine. Another downside is that the book doesn't treat the issues of pdf generation, html generation and hyperlinks, which are becoming very popular in latex circles.

Get this book, and you will probably not need another latex book until the O'Reilley pocket reference to tex and latex comes out.

If you are a beginner in LaTeX, better look for another book. If you have experience on the subject and want something to help you writing your thesis (as my case) or higher level things (or want to know deeply LaTeX), this book is for you.

Everyone seems to recommends this as a "second" or companion LaTeX book following the purchase of Lamport's guide. Buying these two books and trying to learn LaTeX is like trying to learn a foreign language from that language's physics texts--you'll be exasperated in no time. Anyway, this book lists many of the text massaging add-on packages to LaTeX available via download from CTAN. For that use, it's great. (Without reading this book, I probably would never have figured out that the easiest way to indent the first paragraph after the section heading is simply to use the "indentfirst" package.) You'll find a lot of packages that you'll need instantly and probably many more that you will just chuckle about as you read the commands. ("Hey, lookee here at this mini table of contents for-each-chapter package. It's probably a pain in the butt to learn... .)

You will eventually need this book even if you are a rank LaTeX novice so you might as well buy it now.

It should be illegal to own this book if you aren't already very comfortable using LaTex. However, when you are ready to move beyond the default formatting of the LaTex macros, this book is absolutely necessary. I recently had to write my own document class for Technical Reports at my work place. I had used Kopka and Daly for years and was very satisfied, but found it to be of limited utility for things like redefining the sectioning commands or the \cite command. It is at this level that Goosens is most useful. This book also does a nice job of documenting lots of the more commonly used LaTex packages (so good, in fact, that the documentation for the "supertabular" package refers the reader to Goosens).

This book should not be your first on LaTex. You should get Leslie Lamport's guide to LaTex first. This book extends your abilities with general layout, fonts, tables, pictures, charts, bibliography (bibtex) and so much more.

One probably doesn't need to say much about this book. Together with Lamport's book, it is the book that definitely mustn't be absent from your bookshelf! Full of useful information for the intermediate and advanced LaTeX user; it will definitely help you improve your documents!

This book is getting on toward venerable, and it was never very special. It describes some LaTeX stuff that I've used once or twice. Mostly, though, I work from online resources these days. I don't really recommend this book unless you are the kind of person who strongly prefers a book to Google and has extra money in their pocket. It's OK, though.

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: Mittelbach and Goossens's "LaTeX Companion" and Kopka and Daly's "Guide to LaTeX" . 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 although the winner is Kopka and Daly, mainly because it is much the easier to find one's way around, Mittelbach and Goossens is also a must-have book because of the wealth of authoritative information that it contains. Unlike Kopka and Daly it does not start at such a basic level that you could use it as the only source of information about LaTeX, but if you already have Lamport you can carry on from there.

This is a very complete concise reference to the PACKAGES of LaTeX. It won't teach you well how to use LaTeX, but more how to use all of the standard packages. It is far more of a reference book than a read-to-learn book. An excellent reference book at that.