[vox-tech] learning (la)tex

[Micah J. Cowan]

On Wed, Apr 21, 2004 at 09:49:07PM -0700, Mark K. Kim wrote:
> On Wed, 21 Apr 2004, Micah J. Cowan wrote:
> 
> > On Wed, Apr 21, 2004 at 10:38:54AM -0700, Jonathan McPherson wrote:
> > > Dylan,
> > >
> > > > i am interested in learning about latex, and was wondering if there
> > > > were any book reccomendations  out there....
> > >
> > > I highly recommend "The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX2e, or LaTeX2e
> > > in 131 minutes", by Tobias Oetiker.
> > >
> > > This is a 145-page tome, and one of the best things about it is that you
> > > can download it in PDF for free.
> > >
> > > http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/lshort/english/lshort.pdf
> >
> > There is also, "LaTeX: A Document Preparation System", By Leslie
> > Lamport. It provides more information than lshort, IIRC. However,
> > AFAIK it is not free, and goes for about $37, which is a tad expensive
> > for ~250pp. Must be because it's such an esoteric subject... ;-)
> 
> That's a canonical book so might as well get it.  But it's not the best
> book for the first-timers, IMHO... (But certainly not unusable.)

I disagree here, I find it *very* accessible for beginners. It starts
with the very basics, and moves on from there. It never gets into the
really nitty gritty, so I certainly wouldn't consider it an /advanced/
book...

I personally started with the free lshort, and then moved on to the
Lamport book. Funny, though, I use plain TeX way more often than
LaTeX... Guess it's coz I'm such a masochistic geek.

-- 
Micah J. Cowan
micah@cowan.name