From owner-freebsd-questions Sun Dec 21 23:00:42 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) id XAA03592 for questions-outgoing; Sun, 21 Dec 1997 23:00:42 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from owner-freebsd-questions) Received: from mozart.canonware.com (canonware.com [206.184.206.112]) by hub.freebsd.org (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id XAA03586 for ; Sun, 21 Dec 1997 23:00:38 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jasone@canonware.com) Received: from localhost (jasone@localhost) by mozart.canonware.com (8.8.7/8.8.7) with SMTP id WAA04274; Sun, 21 Dec 1997 22:59:56 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from jasone@canonware.com) X-Authentication-Warning: mozart.canonware.com: jasone owned process doing -bs Date: Sun, 21 Dec 1997 22:59:56 -0800 (PST) From: Jason Evans To: John Kenagy cc: questions freebsd Subject: Re: teTeX, latex, Lyx Books In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Sun, 21 Dec 1997, John Kenagy wrote: > Now that I've about got a behemoth of a text processing system > loaded up. I need to know how to use it!;-) > > Anybody got any reccomended books on latex, tex (teTeX), etc.? By far my favorite book on LaTeX is "A Guide to LaTeX2e, 2nd Ed.", by Helmut Kopka and Patrick W. Daly (ISBN 0-201-42777-X). This book is an _excellent_ reference. It covers pretty much everything that I ever do with LaTeX (which has been quite a bit in the past). I didn't initially learn from this book though, so I can't vouch for it's usefulness as a tutorial, but at a glance it looks pretty decent. "The LaTeX Companion", by Goossens, Mittelbach, and Samarin (ISBN 0-201-54199-8), is IMO overrated in most circles, but it does a good job of describing a lot of available packages, and for this reason alone is worth owning if you're going to use LaTeX a lot. I somewhat dislike Leslie Lamport's book. Perhaps the second edition is better, but I learned from this book, and spent countless hours of frustration figuring out things that just weren't covered, such as inserting PostScript figures! I seem to remember it not even telling how to invoke latex (a blatant omission IMO). There are other books out there than these, but the first two I mentioned are a great place to start. If you're getting into lower level layout, you may want a book on TeX, but I've gotten by with surprisingly little TeX without problems... In any case, I've had "Making TeX Work", by Norman Walsh (ISBN 1-56592-051-1) recommended to me, though I can't personally vouch for its quality. Hope this helps, Jason Jason Evans Email: [jasone@canonware.com] Home phone: [(650) 856-8204] Work phone: [(408) 774-8007] Quote: ["Invention is 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration" - Thomas Edison]