A Guide to LATEX

Document Preparation for Beginners and Advanced Users

Helmut Kopka, Patrick W. Daly

Publisher: Addison-Wesley, 1993, 436 pages

ISBN: 0-201-56889-6

Keywords: Programming

Last modified: April 7, 2021, 12:18 a.m.

Synopsis

A Guide to LATEX covers the basics as well as advanced LATEX topics and contains numerous practical examples and handy tips for avoiding problems.

The book explains the LATEX macro package for the TEX text formatting program, presenting a complete description for beginners, going on to more advanced and specialized features. Files for LATEX processing contain the actual text plus markup and programming command, all as ASCII text, something that makes them portable to every computer system. The LATEX/TEX program processes these files to produce high-quality typeset results, especially for complicated mathematics.

LATEX offers the user all the features of any text processing system: automatic section formatting, numbering of sections, figures, tables and equations, table of contents, lists of figures and tables, cross-referencing to the numbers, bibliography, keyword index, colour, inclusion of illustrations. All of these are demonstrated to the reader via examples and exercises through a structure that takes him or her from the simplest beginnings to the more complicated refinements.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
    1. TEX and LATEX
    2. Text and commands
    3. Basic structure of a LATEX file
    4. LATEX processing modes
    5. How to use this book
    6. Producing a LATEX document
    7. Advice to authors
  2. Commands and Environments
    1. Command names and arguments
    2. Environments
    3. Declarations
    4. Lengths
      1. Fixed lengths
      2. Rubber lengths
    5. Special characters
      1. Spaces and carriage returns
      2. Quotation marks
      3. Hyphens and dashes
      4. Printing command characters
      5. The special characters §, †, ‡, ¶, ©, and £
      6. Foreign letters
      7. Accents
      8. Ligatures
      9. The date
    6. Fragile commands
    7. Exercises
  3. Documents and Page Styles
    1. Document style
    2. Page style
      1. Heading declarations
      2. Page numbering
      3. Paragraph spacing
      4. Page format
      5. Single and double column pages
    3. Parts of the document
      1. Title page
      2. Abstract
      3. Sections
      4. Appendix
    4. Table of contents
      1. Automatic entries
      2. Printing the table of contents
      3. Additional entries
      4. Other lists
    5. Fine tuning text
      1. Word character spacing
        1. Sentence termination and periods
        2. French spacing
        3. Character combinations “ ‘ and ’ ”
        4. Italic correction
        5. Breaking ligatures
        6. Inserting arbitrary spacing
        7. Inserting variable … and      sequences
      2. Line breaking
        1. The command \\
        2. Further line breaking commands
      3. Paragraph spacing
      4. Paragraph indentation
      5. Page breaking
        1. Normal pages
        2. Pages with figures and tables
        3. Two column pages
        4. Two-sided pages
        5. Restricted page breaking
        6. Further tips on page breaking
    6. Word division
      1. Manual hyphenation
      2. Hyphenation list
      3. Suppressing hyphenation
      4. Line width and word division
      5. More about word division
      6. Word division with multilingual text
  4. Displayed Text
    1. Changing font
      1. Emphatic font switch \em
      2. Font styles available
      3. Choice of font size
      4. Additional fonts
      5. Character sets and symbols
    2. Centering and indenting
      1. Centered text
      2. One-sided justification
      3. Two-sided justification
      4. Verse indentations
    3. Listings
      1. Sample itemize
      2. Sample enumerate
      3. Sample description
      4. Nested listings
      5. Changing label style
      6. Bibliography
    4. Generalized lists
      1. Standard label
      2. List style parameters
      3. Example of a user's list
      4. Lists as new environments
      5. Trivial lists
      6. Nested lists
    5. Theorem-like declarations
    6. Tabulator stops
      1. Basics
      2. Sample line
      3. Tab stops and the left margin
      4. Further tabbing commands
      5. Remarks on tabbing
    7. Boxes
      1. LR boxes
      2. Vertical shifting of LR boxes
      3. Parboxes and minipages
      4. Rule boxes
      5. Nested boxes
      6. Box style parameters
    8. Tables
      1. Constructing tables
      2. Table style parameters
      3. Table examples
      4. Floating tables
    9. Printing source text
    10. Footnotes and marginal notes
      1. Standard footnotes
      2. Non-standard footnotes
      3. Footnote style parameters
      4. Footnotes in forbidden modes
      5. Footnotes in minipages
      6. Marginal notes
      7. Style parameters for marginal notes
    11. Comments within text
  5. Mathematical Formulas
    1. Mathematical environments
    2. Main elements of math mode
      1. Constants and variables
      2. Exponents and indices
      3. Fractions
      4. Roots
      5. Sums and integrals
      6. Continuation dots — ellipsis
    3. Mathematical symbols
      1. Greek letters
      2. Calligraphic letters
      3. Binary operators
      4. Relations and their negations
      5. Arrows and pointers
      6. Various other symbols
      7. Symbols with two sizes
      8. Function names
      9. Mathematical accents
    4. Additional elements
      1. Automatic sizing of bracket symbols
      2. Ordinary text within a formula
      3. Matrices and fields
      4. Lines above and below formulas
      5. Stacked symbols
      6. Additional TEX commands for math
      7. Multi-line equations
      8. Framed or side-by-side formulas
      9. Chemical formulas and bold face in math formulas
    5. Fine tuning mathematics
      1. Horizontal spacing
      2. Selecting font size in formulas
      3. Manual sizing of bracket symbols
      4. Math style parameters
      5. Some further advice
      6. Framed displayed formulas
      7. What else?
  6. Pictures
    1. Picture size and position
    2. The picture environment
    3. The positioning commands
    4. Picture element commands
      1. Test within pictures
      2. Picture boxes — rectangles
      3. Straight lines
      4. Arrows
      5. Circles
      6. Ovals and rounded corners
      7. Vertically stacked text
      8. Framed test
    5. Further picture commands and examples
      1. Line thickness
      2. Nested pictures
      3. Saving parts of pictures
      4. Extended syntax of the picture environment
      5. More examples
      6. General recommendations
    6. Floating tables and figures
      1. Float Placement
      2. Style parameters for floats
      3. Float captions
      4. Float examples
      5. References to figures and tables in text
  7. User-Defined Structures
    1. Counters
      1. LATEX counters
      2. User-defined counters
      3. Changing counter values
      4. Printing counter values
    2. Lengths
    3. User-defined commands
      1. Commands without arguments
      2. Commands with arguments
      3. Additional examples of user-defined commands
    4. User-defined environments
      1. Environments without arguments
      2. Environments with arguments
    5. Some comments on user-defined structures
      1. Saving user-defined structures
      2. Abbreviating structures
      3. Identical command and counter names
      4. Range of user definitions
      5. Order definitions
      6. Transfer of arguments
      7. Nested definitions
      8. Unwanted spacing
      9. Two final examples
    6. Adapting LATEX styles
      1. The LATEX program package
      2. Some TEX commands
      3. Calling LATEX styles
      4. Modifying the text size
      5. Adapting LATEX to another language
        1. Adaptions to Esperanto
        2. The file espo.sty
        3. The file esperant.sty
      6. Natural sciences bibliographies
        1. A sample natural sciences style
        2. A sample bibliography style
      7. Publisher styles
  8. Advanced Features
    1. Processing parts of a document
      1. The \input command
      2. The \include command
      3. Terminal input and output
    2. Including TEX commands in LATEX
    3. Importing graphics
      1. The \special command
      2. An example: PostScript
    4. In-text reference
      1. Cross-references
      2. References to the bibliography
      3. Index register
      4. Glossary
    5. MakeIndex — a keyword processor
    6. The various LATEX files
    7. Preloaded and load-on-demand fonts
  9. Error Messages
    1. Basic structure of error messages
      1. TEX error messages
      2. LATEX error messages
      3. Error messages from TEX macros
    2. Error upon error
      1. Typical serious errors
      2. Mathematical errors
      3. Errors from multi-file texts
    3. List of all LATEX error messages
    4. TEX error messages
    5. Warnings
      1. LATEX warnings
      2. TEX warnings
    6. Search for stubborn errors
  1. Letters
    1. The LATEX letter style
    2. A house letter style
    3. Advice on letter customization
      1. User-defined letter commands
      2. User-defined letterheads
  2. Bibliographic Data Bases
    1. The BIBTEX program
    2. Creating a bibliographic data base
      1. The entry types
      2. The fields
      3. Cross-referencing fields
      4. Special field formats
      5. Abbreviations
      6. Using a template
  3. SLITEX
    1. The basic idea of colors
    2. The root file
    3. The slide file
      1. Slides
      2. Black and white slides
      3. Overlays
      4. Slide notes
      5. Multi-color math formulas
    4. SLITEX fonts
      1. SLITEX font styles
      2. SLITEX font sizes
    5. Further SLITEX features
      1. SLITEX page styles
      2. Selective slide processing
  4. LATEX Extensions
    1. International LATEX
      1. How to internationalize LATEX
      2. The file german.sty
      3. The file french.sty
      4. Multulangual LATEX — the babel system
    2. Latest and future versions of LATEX
      1. A new font selection scheme
      2. Simplified font selection
      3. Mathematical fonts
      4. Installing the NFSS font selection
      5. Further LATEX accessories
    3. Sources for LATEX files
      1. TEX organizations
  5. Character Fonts
    1. Introduction
    2. Classification of the basic TEX fonts
    3. Proportional fonts
      1. Serif fonts
        1. The Roman font family
        2. The slanted font family
        3. The italic font family
        4. The bold font family
      2. Sans serif fonts
        1. The upright sans serif fonts
        2. The slanted sans serif fonts
        3. The bold sans serif fonts
        4. The font cminch
      3. Decorative and special fonts
    4. Fixed and typewriter fonts
      1. Upright typewriter fonts
      2. Caps and small caps
      3. Sloping typewriter fonts
      4. Mathematical typewriter fonts
    5. Mathematical and symbol fonts
      1. Mathematical text fonts
      2. Mathematical symbols
      3. Variable sized symbols
      4. Additional character fonts
        1. The LATEX lazy fonts
        2. Fonts for making pictures
        3. Logo fonts
    6. Character assignments within a font
    7. Cyrillic fonts
    8. The font files
      1. The root names
      2. Font magnification
      3. Pixel coding
      4. Packed coding
    9. Remarks on METAFONT
    10. Extended character sets for TEX 3.x
      1. Limitations and deficiencies of the CMS fonts
      2. The proposed extension from Cork
      3. The DC font
      4. Character assignments in the extended fonts
      5. Invoking the DC fonts
      6. Installing DC fonts as standard
  6. Command Summary
    1. Brief description of the LATEX commands
    2. Summary of tables and figures
    3. Invalid TEX commands
      1. TEX tabulator commands
      2. Page formatting, footnotes, floats
      3. TEX font commands
      4. Math commands
      5. Miscellaneous 

Reviews

A try to learn LATEX...

Reviewed by Roland Buresund

Disappointing *** (3 out of 10)

Last modified: May 21, 2007, 2:54 a.m.

Opinion

I needed a book about LATEX, because I didn't know it. I still don't know it, so I can't say that this is very good.

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