Product Description

How many hours have you spent trying to get LATEX to do what You want? If the answer is ‘too many, then you need LATEX Line by Line. Written for LATEX novices, this book starts from the very basics providing clear explanations and realistic examples. The book is designed to help you find solutions to specific tasks, such as indexing, setting complicated mathematics and producing simple line diagrams. It also aims to guide you through the process of creating documents as simple as letters and articles or as complex as books—all to a professional presentational quality. The glossary provides guidance on every standard command—and a few non-standard ones too. Although the book provides a comprehensive introduction to the latest version of LATEX, namely LATEX 2ε, an appendix clearly explains the differences between LATEX 2ε and the original version of LATEX. In this way, the book can profitably be used by people who still have the older version. Many of the examples of typesetting that are given in the book are coded as templates and are available on the accompanying Website. They can be used as recipes or skeletons which can be customized by making minor adjustments to the commands. Full explanations of how these documents have been constructed are given for those wanting to better understand the inner workings of this flexible and powerful package.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1144525 in Books
• Published on: 1999-01-05
• Released on: 1999-01-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 328 pages

From the Publisher
An easy-to-follow tutorial on the most popular text processing system used in the academic community. Explains formatting fundamentals including more complex techniques for presenting difficult mathematical formulas. Contains templates (most of them also available on disk) to create a variety of documents--from a business letter to a technical report--and introduces some advanced features of LaTeX which can be used to produce a customized document style. Numerous examples, an appendix of mathematical symbols and a glossary of typesetting terms are included.

From the Back Cover
How many hours have you spent trying to get LATEX to do what You want? If the answer is ‘too many, then you need LATEX Line by Line. Written for LATEX novices, this book starts from the very basics providing clear explanations and realistic examples. The book is designed to help you find solutions to specific tasks, such as indexing, setting complicated mathematics and producing simple line diagrams. It also aims to guide you through the process of creating documents as simple as letters and articles or as complex as books—all to a professional presentational quality. The glossary provides guidance on every standard command—and a few non-standard ones too. Although the book provides a comprehensive introduction to the latest version of LATEX, namely LATEX 2ε, an appendix clearly explains the differences between LATEX 2ε and the original version of LATEX. In this way, the book can profitably be used by people who still have the older version. Many of the examples of typesetting that are given in the book are coded as templates and are available on the accompanying Website. They can be used as recipes or skeletons which can be customized by making minor adjustments to the commands. Full explanations of how these documents have been constructed are given for those wanting to better understand the inner workings of this flexible and powerful package.

Customer Reviews

Single Best Book on LaTeX available!
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).

Best beginner's book
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.

Well-written but missing many things
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.