TEX, pronounced “tek,” and its considerable elaboration LATEX (“la’tek”), are mathematical typesetting systems [1,2] that hardly need introduction; they are the transformative work of two Turing award winners, each of whom received his award for seminal and outstanding work in several other areas of computing science. Scientific publishing has not been the same ever since TEX’s, and later LATEX’s, arrival.
This marvelously streamlined 100-page book “is aimed squarely at beginners to [sic] LATEX who wish to learn the basics with a minimum of fuss.” The authors “feel that there is [in the LATEX literature] a niche for a short, lively introduction that covers the essential material, while avoiding unnecessary detail.” My personal experience in attempting to master LATEX definitely bears this out; after all, the great preponderance of an author’s mental energy should be directed at the mathematics and science that she is trying to express, not at layout, format, fonts, alphabets, tables, and figures. This is not to dispute the awesome power of formulation and notation in mathematics, as is for example evidenced by the prevalence of Leibniz’s calculus notation over Newton’s. LATEX facilitates the use of optimally effective mathematical notation in a way that no other means does. As one version of the saying goes: “When you’re up to your waist in alligators, it’s hard to remember that your initial objective was to drain the swamp.”
In contrast with some “For Dummies” books, the authors’ effective “humor-to-content ratio,” and the quality of the humor itself, are highly instrumental in keeping the book lively throughout. One of many humorous LATEX-encoded examples is: “Sporting analogies won’t even get you to first base.”
Chapter 1 imparts a very calming, skeletal view of LATEX’s flow: its input, execution, and output options, the latter for example PDF or DVI. There is nothing extra or distracting. This introductory chapter cites, for intermediate or advanced LATEX, two comprehensive sources [2,3], which are the last two of only nine(!) entries in the entire book’s bibliography (no criticism here).
Chapter 2, brief as are all the others save chapter 3, features a superb example of LATEX source side by side with its human-readable, aesthetically pleasing output, some of which includes tables. LATEX code side by side with its output is put to great effect throughout the book.
Chapter 3, on mathematical typesetting proper and the longest chapter at 22 pages, includes treatment of numbers, powers thereof, sub- and super-scripts, summation and integration symbols, matrices, and various options regarding equations. I can’t at the moment think of anything else to be typeset that I’ll ever need; if I do, I can go to the more encyclopedic references that the authors cite. Good side effects of the copious examples are reminders of theorems such as the inequalities A≥B≥C among the arithmetic, geometric, and harmonic means.
Chapter 4, on document classes, shows the pedagogic usefulness of the book’s bottom-up (my characterization) approach; document classes are substantially treated after the previous chapters’ examples are given. I much prefer this to the invariably soporific enumeration at a hypothetical LATEX book’s beginning, of “book, article, presentation, poster” followed by a dry, abstract description of each. And then there is the humorous illustration of LATEX’s \thanks [sic]: “Supported by the Bearded Welshman Preservation Society.”
The very crisply written chapter 5, on packages, includes a section on making a bibliography, which in turn has a sample reference to an actual paper by Alpher, Bethe, and Gamow [4]. The humor here is implicit and deep: Bethe was included as coauthor, initially without his knowledge, just to complete the pun on the Greek alphabet. (Hans A. Bethe turned out to be a good sport, and ultimately received the Nobel Prize for his other fundamental papers.)
Appendices A, B, C, and D comprise a sample article, a sample report, a sample presentation, and a sample poster, respectively. Appendix E, “Internet Resources,” is a very effective “linearization” of all the LATEX-related sites that I have heretofore randomly walked, jumped, and skipped to in a confusing and increasingly frustrating attempt at mastering LATEX, or at least using it smoothly. This book showed me the viable alternative to these bad habits, and is as close as can be to a royal road to LATEX.
The authors’ effectual conciseness, coupled with their highly skilled choice of LATEX subtopics and sequence of treatment, is ideal for imparting essential, core LATEX knowledge and dexterity to authors of math/statistics-intensive books, articles, or presentations. Their book has my highest recommendation.
