[GRLUG] LaTeX books

[Greg Folkert]

On Sat, 2008-08-02 at 20:49 -0400, john-thomas richards wrote:
> I have begun learning LaTeX (typesetting) and would like a book or two
> on it.  The Grand Rapids library system does not have any books on LaTeX
> so I thought I would turn you to ask if any of you have any books on
> LaTeX that you are willing to part with cheap (and I mean *cheap*).
> 
> Anyone?

Best book I've seen to date it an OLD one.

A Guide to LaTeX: Document Preparation for Beginners and Advanced Users
By Helmut Kopka and Patrick W. Daly
Publisher: Addison-Wesley
First Printer: 1993
ISBN10: 0201568896

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0201568896/

Used by many Colleges and Universities used it for just its title
purpose (and I think still today). Its still extremely relevant today,
as Docs I made back then still print today.

I bought 3 of them back in about 1996 as I knew I'd wear through all of
them, which I did. I recently (about 2 years ago) bought a used First
printing but an exceptional condition one from Amazon for like $6. Neat
part is it has an errata printed on a small piece of paper and glued to
the last page of the Index on page 436 (only 5 items)...

There are also suggestions at the link for those that want more. But its
vera-vera-nice for a 15 year old book.

Yes, the entire LaTeX stuff has changed out from underneath itself, but
it is 100% COMPLETELY backwards compatible.

One thing you gotta remember: LaTeX is a programming language for
Typesetting and a damn good one for it. Its not hard, just very capable
and lotsa stuff you can do with it if you include lotsa of the already
made stuff from the past years. Many distributions have nearly an
unbelievable mountain of add-ons. Modern ones are using "texlive" now
and its very very good and mostly bug free, as bug free as the previous
stuff, thanks to regression testing.

Now, don't let it overwhelm you, many people do. Just follow the
guidelines that the "LaTeX book" shows you and it'll be an awesome
start.

Just as an Example, the guy that does: 
	http://blog.cooklikeyourgrandmother.com/

Good friend of mine in Cleveland, Ohio, published his book, he is an
admitted Windows turned Linux guy that struggled with Docs forever with
Word/OpenOffice... etc.

Got him to try to publish his awesome cookbook using LaTeX, with the
book as a guide. Now he keeps the revisions in SVN. That is the other
benefit of using LaTeX, versioning and revisions are SOOO DUMB EASY to
keep track of.

Good luck jtr.

P.S. One last thing, OO.o v2.4 and after can take Word docs and export
them as LaTeX (verson 2e)docs. You'll need to clean them up but with
significantly large (or large sets) of Docs this might be a big plus.
-- 
greg at gregfolkert.net
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