Customer Reviews

Math Into LaTeX

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Math Into LaTeX is a book with diffuse purpose -- a little bit of introduction for those trying to get into using LaTeX for their mathematical type-setting needs, a little bit of wide coverage on commands needed for many math articles, and plenty of pointing to other references on the Internet and in books. In many ways, it's too diffuse to be useful on a day-to-day basis; even though there's a Quick Finder, a mini-index at the front of the book, the choices don't seem appropriate for what comes up most often in my hair-pulling sessions with a recalcitrant LaTeX (such as fixing the margin at the top of the page).

The first section, titled A Short Course, is a simple 63-page guide, walking one through the creation of a LaTeX file, from a 22-line simple note, to adding individual math terms, to producing large formulas, to dealing with the inevitable error messages, even through running the LaTeX program. However, it's not really explained how to deal with the dvi file that comes out of the program -- a vague description that a video driver is used to view a dvi file is given in this short course, but the real information is to be found scattered throughout the book. This is a failing shared with =many= TeX and LaTeX books; one gets in lots of trouble for all that is =not= written down.

A quick overview of the remaining sections: in Text and Math one finds the meat of the book -- how to organize text regions, whether in paragraphs or lists; dealing with fonts; how to organize formulas and symbols; how to align equations and their different parts. I use this section as a reference almost constantly in typing up math articles. Section III, Document Structure, does a quick look at the overall skeleton of a LaTeX document, and in particular looks at AMS articles. Customization covers some of the more used customizing options, like changing spacing and counters of list items. The Long Documents section looks at three things: making bibliographies, making indexes, and pulling separate files together for one large document (like books). The last section, Math and the Web, talks about various conversions one can use to put up a version of LaTeX documents on the Internet, and how to deal with some PDF issues, but it's rather a spare section. The appendices, of course, have the standard charts for math symbols and European Accents, lists of fonts, and dealing with conversions. Check out the Bibliography - if you get a hold of some of the other LaTeX tomes, you will see that it's hard to find a better one than this one (though that doesn't mean a better one can't be written).

That said, this has turned out to be one of the most useful LaTeX books I have ever used (the absolutely most useful was a very short book printed by SIAM, and is for people who don't need help with the bare bones). I own three LaTeX books right now (this one, The Latex Companion, and The Latex Graphics Companion). Of the three, this one is the most useful in my day-to-day writing of mathematics in LaTeX. The problem with the Companion books is that they are useful for the esoteric topics they cover, which would be hard to figure out on one's own, but they really don't address nuts & bolts issues like Math Into LaTeX does. If you can only have one LaTeX book, you should get this one; if you have three LaTex books, you should still get it, for there are few other LaTeX books which make things so understandable and covers so many useful topics.

I assume that you would not be looking at this book's entry in the catalogue if you did not know already that TeX is the best available tool for typesetting manuscripts involving a lot of mathematical formulae. This book presents LaTeX2e, the current "industry standard", which combines LaTeX with AMS-TeX.

The first objective of the book is to get a complete novice started in the shortest amount of time. This is done in Part 1, which contains all one needs to typeset a simple mathematical text. Part 2 gives a very detailed description of typesetting text and mathematics, pointing out the differences between LaTeX-derived commands and AMS-TeX codes. This is done very carefully and clearly. The structure of all sections is basically the same: overview of the contents, definitions of the commands covered, their scope, examples, typical errors (together with error commands generated by LaTeX when something goes wrong), more advanced topics. This part covers pretty much any scenario you are likely to encounter typesetting a mathematical document.

Part 3 goes into details of LaTeX document structure, including a synopsis of various document classes and how best to use them. Part 4 explains how to customize LaTeX, Part 5 treats long documents and BiBTeX, the bibliographic database. Final part, Part 6, treats LaTeX and the Web, mainly by poiting out various Web sites that can help you if you are serious about posting your work on the Web.

The book is very good at what it sets out to explain. There are, however, certain topics the author decided to leave out. There is no description of the picture environment, which although not exactly user friedly, is useful from time to time. The slide environment for producing transparencies is not described either, and I think this could have been included without too much trouble. To me this is a slightly more serious drawback than the first omission.

I give the book five stars for the following reason. This is a book that teaches you how to produce beautiful scientific manuscripts rather than how to rewrite LaTeX. The book itself is a very nice looking document, and so serves as a very good example of what is possible to achieve with LaTeX, if you follow the author's advice.

Math into LaTeX provides and excellent introduction to typesetting math in LaTeX for technical documents, web pages and books.

The book provides a short introduction to the overall use of LaTeX. This section is not the most exhaustive text on the topic, but provides all the fundamental information for a user start preparing a LaTeX document, assuming the user has LaTeX installed and has some basic knowledge of creating LaTeX documents.

The book's core provides numerous useful details and examples of how to typeset math, both simple and complex, using either LaTeX commands or AMS-LaTeX commands. This is the most important aspect of the book and is supported with many important examples using both LaTeX and AMS-LaTeX document classes with supporting example articles to be found in the appendix.

Valuable chapters include how to write books in LaTeX with details of how to handle large bibliographies and indices. Additionally, the complex issue of how to format math for web based publications is also presented in some detail.

Lastly, the structure of the book is very clear and formatted ideally, providing the reader with an excellent example of how to typeset and structure a book using LaTeX.

Sometimes when I tex I just need some examples where I can see the outcome and the tex commands that produced them. This book has plenty such things, and therefore very helpful in that respect. When it comes to computer related stuff, I guess I learn best by looking at what's been done and modifying them to produce what I want. If you're that way too, this book would be very helpful.

It also has some helpful suggestions for texing so that trouble shooting would be easier later on.

Having worked with (and against) the various flavors of TeX and LaTeX in the last five years, I can strongly recommend this bookas both an invaluable resource for mathematicians writing in AmsLaTeX and as a primer for those just starting to learn the markup language. It's up to date, aimed at math writers (unlike many other books on TeX, written more for computer scientists I believe), and is a great reference book (only The Latex Companion is better). The first few chapters are available for a preview at Gratzer's home page.

I say "nearly" because pretty much everything in the book can be found on the web in some form or another. When I was a LaTeX beginner, though, I found it much easier to learn things from a book than by downloading lots of files and trying to sort through them or by bookmarking webpages. As a more experienced LaTeX user, I find it is sometimes handy to have a book with sticky-note markers you can flip to when you are trying to remember how to make the symbol you want instead of trying to look up a cheat sheet on the web. Good for beginners, and good to grow into, as I doubt you'll jump into BibTeX and indexes right away. I didn't, but I was glad to have those sections when I needed them. I am also glad to see that some material on PDF has been added in this edition, though I wouldn't be able to comment on it as my edition is older.

Compared to what I paid when I bought a previous edition, this is a steal for such a useful book.

As a novice in the subject I first purchased this book several years ago along with three or four other standard books on LaTex. Despite having adequate alternative sources of information about LaTex I quickly found myself accessing Gratzer book first and rarely needing to go further. The book is well writing, elegant is style and the material flows. It contains a wealth of LaTex code paired with rendered images so that causes and effect can easily be observed and many useful examples of how to achieve specific desirable effects. These qualities combine to produce a book that is pleasant to read and effective at teaching LaTex to the novice, but also useful as a reference for the more experienced.

I recently purchased the third edition which retains all these desirable qualities and adds in a similar well executed fashion sections pertaining to Internet related document preparations.

To write a mathematics formula intensive article or thesis, one has two possibilities: either using a MS-Word-like software, or using LaTeX. There is no doubt: even if LaTeX made documents have a much more professional aspect, the use of this typesetting package is not so trivial! Hence, unlike traditional word processing software, a companion textbook is essential. Among the documentation available (for free) on the web, or other textbooks I went thru at the library, I found "Math into LaTeX" the most valuable introduction and reference book to LaTeX. I have to say that I bought it because once at the bookstore, among the books available on the shelf, it appears to me to be the one with the best price-quality ratio (it is extremely nicely crafted... and made with LaTeX). Once at home, the beginner I was finely understood the philosophy associated with this typesetting package, and at last, I was able to write the 3-page document I wanted. Now I consider I have become an *intermediate* user of LaTeX, and this book is still the one I put on the back burner; it realy constitute the concise and ergonomic reference I wanted. To conclude, perhaps the most valuable outcomes of this book are the rules and tips given all along the pages by Gratzer. If you follow them, I ensure you will proceed efficiently.

If you can only afford one LaTeX book, and you need to crank out documents tomorrow, this is the book to have. Plenty of example documents that you can download. You'll want the rest of the book to take full advantage of what LaTeX is capable of.

I just wanted to point out that this book is obsolete. The new fourth edition title has changed to "More Math into LATEX". Buy that instead...