Math into LATEX: An Introduction to LATEX and AMS-LATEX [Hardcover]

George Grätzer (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0817638059 | ISBN-13: 978-0817638054 | Publication Date: November 29, 1995

A new chapter "A Visual Introduction to MikTeX," an open source implementation of TeX and LaTeX for Windows operating systems Another new chapter describing amsrefs, a simpler method for formatting references that incorporates and replaces BibTeX data Integrates a major revision to the amsart document class, along with updated examples

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

From reviews of the first edition:

"Recommended both as a very good introductory text for beginners as well as a handy up-to-date LaTeX reference for experienced users."

—Mathematical Reviews

"Writing a sufficiently long math text (lecture notes, monographs) by a non-expert TeX writer . . .  requires the use of a well-documented package. Gratzer’s book is a solution."

—EMS Newsletter

Product Details

• Hardcover: 451 pages
• Publisher: Birkhäuser Boston (November 29, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0817638059
• ISBN-13: 978-0817638054
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,602,065 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Middle-of-the-road book, covering most LaTeX math needs, June 28, 2001

By 

Mary P. Campbell "math geek" (Flushing, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Math Into LaTeX (Paperback)

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.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How to make mathematics look nice, January 28, 2001

By 

Jacek Brodzki - See all my reviews

This review is from: Math Into LaTeX (Paperback)

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.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent introduction to typesetting math in LaTeX, July 12, 2002

By 

Nick Zacharov (Finland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Math Into LaTeX (Paperback)

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.