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A Guide to Latex by Helmut Kopka & Patrick Daly Recommended

ISBN: 0-201-56889-6       Publisher: Addison-Wesley       Pages: 436pp       Price: £24-95

Categories:   documentation

Reviewed by Francis Glassborow in C Vu 5-5 (Jul 1993)

However LATEX has not stood still and yesterdays novice users have grown to need something more powerful. In his German text Helmut Kopka met this challenge and produced an excellent book that continues to have use long after the initial process of learning LATEX has been completed.

A Guide to LATEX is not a straight translation. Such a publication would be very much prejudiced by the fact that much of the original was aimed at the production of documents in German. The new book is a genuine collaboration between the original author and the new co-author, Patrick Daly. The result is a first class book that will meet the needs of almost all LATEX users, be they novices experimenting with a PD version of LATEX (from PDSL or elsewhere) or expert users who want to explore more recent developments.

Books like this one greatly add to the value of PD products as they provide the documentation and tutorial support that the software needs. The combined cost of PD software and this book will seem high to anyone who fails to realise that what they are getting is a usable version of what is probably the most highly specified document preparation package ever designed.

Within academic circles documents for electronic transmission are usually prepared with one of the TEX interfaces. With the advent of powerful PC's this method is now accessible to many more. If only all contributors to C Vu could use such methods your editor's task would be greatly simplified (no, don't send me TEXed documents, I only have to go through the tiresome task of deTEXing them).

If you wish to prepare high quality documents with complete control over the typography, layout, indexes and tables of contents this book with appropriate software will fill your needs.