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LaTeX in a Nutshell?
I am a fan of O'Reilly books and your publications help me a lot in my work!
I suggest O'Reilly consider to publish some books on LaTeX, a very nice and popular document preparation system (see http://www.latex-project.org/). Many academic disciplines regard it as a standard. I do have some reference books such as "LaTeX Companion", etc. But personally I prefer the style of O'Reilly. And I believe you must will build another classic.
Thanks!
I suggest O'Reilly consider to publish some books on LaTeX, a very nice and popular document preparation system (see http://www.latex-project.org/). Many academic disciplines regard it as a standard. I do have some reference books such as "LaTeX Companion", etc. But personally I prefer the style of O'Reilly. And I believe you must will build another classic.
Thanks!
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Inappropriate?There are a lot of good books on LaTeX available, most notably from Addison-Wesley, which are about as close to official as you're going to get. Kopka and Daly's Guide to LaTeX and Gratzer's (More) Math into LaTeX take the reader from never having used LaTeX through the process of creating their first article, and have plenty of coverage of advanced topics as well. I'm not convinced there's anything more that O'Reilly can offer on the topic.
I’m indifferent
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This is one of the best points
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Thanks for your comments!:-)
Sure, these books are very good. However, as you can see, although there existed many great books on C++, O'Reilly's publications still stand out in the area. I am just looking forward to see something similar. I don't think people will reject a truly good book (if it is). :-) -
Inappropriate?The best books tend to be the ones by the experts in the field. For TeX and LaTeX, those books haven't been O'Reilly books.
I don't want to slag O'Reilly, but lately I've been finding that the best books for my needs (systems administration) seem to be coming from other publishers. There are still some classics that can't be beat, but it feels like O'Reilly's focus has changed. So I'm fine going elsewhere for books on those topics, and I'm similarly fine with the good LaTeX books coming from other publishers.
I’m indifferent
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Inappropriate?O'Reilly does indeed have a book about LaTeX: "LaTeX par la pratique" by Christian Rolland, ISBN: 2-84177-073-7 which was published at the end of 1999. It's a French book. I started with LaTeX on my own in 2005 and this was the best book that I could find at that time.
It beats Kopka and Daly's guide (the 2003 edition) in my sincere opinion, which I studied afterwards. However, being published in 1999 means that the O'Reilly book doesn't cover many newer packages but the fundamentals that you learn from this book means that you're much well prepared to try newer packages on your own and finding the right information from other sources.
I have gone through many books on LaTeX but Rolland's book is still the book that I return to when I need some accurate information. It's a book that I can re-read from cover to cover due to its very lively style of presentation and finding the right information quickly is very easy in this book.
It's sad though that a newer edition of this book doesn't exist and that this book being written in French has a limited audience. Rolland's book is one of the few books that have secured a place on my bookshelf. -
Inappropriate?Personally, I would have bought such a book a year ago as I've recently finished an open university foundation science course which involved a lot of maths and for half of the course I was spending hours using all sorts of kludges to put the equations into a word document.
Half way through I discovered mathtype which made it easier, but the free version I was using (and indeed, word's built in equation editor) didn't support the features I needed to present the equations in my assignments in a professional style... a style which I know I could have achieved with LaTeX, had I the time to learn how to use it properly... but free online guides to LaTeX were wholly inadequate for use in the time I had available to me, whereas if there'd been a "Learning LaTeX" (or equivalent) book, I know I could have picked up what I needed in a couple of days flat, as I have done with PERL when I needed it.
I would still buy such a book now as I might well find a use for it in the degree I'm doing, which while not a science degree, will have aspects of science in it.
I’m hopeful
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Inappropriate?So what's wrong with the existing LaTeX books? Gratzer's book, in particular, focuses on the mathematical aspects of LaTeX, including advice on how best to format various sorts of equations. It also includes a tutorial section, and the latest version even has information on choosing and selecting a TeX system for your operating system.
By the way, TeX Live 2009 is now out; running on Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows, it's a very nice way to get pretty much everything you need to get started.
