Product Description

"Math into LaTeX" is for the mathematician, physicist, engineer, scientist, or technical typist who needs to quickly learn how to write and typeset articles and books containing mathematical formulas, and requires a thorough reference book on all aspects of LaTeX and the AMS packages, the enhancements to LaTeX by the American Mathematical Society.

Features a section devoted to book publishing and typesetting as well as an introduction to web development from LaTeX. Presents a detailed discussion of all aspects of LaTeX and the AMS packages and includes a formula gallery, sample files, and templates, as well as useful appendices containing symbol tables and covering special topics, such as the use of PostScript fonts and where to find TeXware.

Key features of Math into LaTeX: * A simple, example-based, visual approach * A quick introduction (Part I) allowing readers to type their first articles in only a few hours * Sample articles to demonstrate the basic structure of LaTeX and AMS articles Useful appendices containing mathematical and text symbol tables and information on how to convert to standard LaTeX from older versions of LaTeX and AMS-LaTeX

New features of the Third Edition include: * Coverage of AMS packages, version 2.0 * A new chapter on writing books in LaTeX * A new part, Math and the Web, covers where to find useful LaTeX-related information on the Internet and how to publish LaTeX documents on the Web

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #623397 in Books
• Published on: 2000-06-22
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 616 pages

Review
"To sum up, Grätzer book can be 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 (Review of a previous edition) "Writing a sufficiently long math text (lecture notes, monographs) by a non-expert TeX writer wanting to produce a text of good typographical quality requires the use of a well-documented package. Grätzer’s book is a solution." —EMS Newsletter (Review of a previous edition) "This book is truly unique in its focus on getting started fast yet keeping it simple. It is indispensable for the beginner and a handy reference for the experienced user." —Bulletin of the Mathematical Association of India  (Review of a previous edition)

Grätzer's book is a solution. -- European Mathematical Society Newsletter

Customer Reviews

Middle-of-the-road book, covering most LaTeX math needs
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.

How to make mathematics look nice
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.

An excellent introduction to typesetting math in LaTeX
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.