The LaTeX Companion
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The LaTeX Companion has long been the essential resource for anyone
using LaTeX to create high-quality printed documents. This completely updated
edition brings you all the latest information about LaTeX and the vast range
of add-on packages now available--over 200 are covered! Full of new tips and
tricks for using LaTeX in both traditional and modern typesetting, this book
will also show you how to customize layout features to your own needs--from
phrases and paragraphs to headings, lists, and pages.
Inside, you will find:
- Expert advice on using LaTeX's basic formatting tools to create all types
of publications--from memos to encyclopedias
- In-depth coverage of important extension packages for tabular and technical
typesetting, floats and captions, multicolumn layouts--including reference
guides and discussions of the underlying typographic and TeXnical concepts
- Detailed techniques for generating and typesetting contents lists, bibliographies,
indexes, etc.
- Tips and tricks for LaTeX programmers and systems support
New to this edition:
- Nearly 1,000 fully tested examples that illustrate the text and solve typographical
and technical problems--all ready to run!
- An additional chapter on citations and bibliographies
- Expanded material on the setup and use of fonts to access a huge collection
of glyphs, and to typeset text from a wide range of languages and cultures
- Major new packages for graphics, "verbatim" listings, floats, and page layout
- Full coverage of the latest packages for all types ofdocuments--mathematical,
multilingual, and many more
- Detailed help on all error messages, including those troublesome low-level
TeX errors
Like its predecessor, The LaTeX Companion, Second Edition, is
an indispensable reference for anyone wishing to use LaTeX productively.
The accompanying CD-ROM contains a complete plug-and-play LaTeX installation,
including all the packages and examples featured in the book.
Table of Contents
List of Figures.
List of Tables.
Preface.
1. Introduction.
A brief history.
All those files.
Working with this book.
2. The Structure of a LaTeX Document.
The structure of a source file.
Sectioning commands.
Table of contents structures.
Managing references.
3. Basic Formatting Tools.
Phrases and paragraphs.
Footnotes, endnotes, and marginals.
List structures.
Simulating typed text.
Lines and columns.
4. The Layout of the Page.
Geometrical dimensions of the layout.
Changing the layout.
Dynamic page data: page numbers and marks.
Page styles.
Visual formatting.
Doing layout with class.
5. Tabular Material.
Standard LaTeX environments.
array--Extending the tabular Environments.
Calculating column widths.
Multipage tabular material.
Color in tables.
Customising table rules and spacing.
Further extensions.
Footnotes in tabular material.
Applications.
6. Mastering Floats.
Understanding float parameters.
Float placement control.
Extensions to LaTeX's float concept.
Inline floats.
Controlling the float caption.
7. Fonts and Encodings.
Introduction.
Understanding font characteristics.
Using fonts in text.
Using fonts in math.
Standard LaTeX font support.
PSNFSS--PostScript fonts with LaTeX.
A collection of font packages.
The LaTeX world of symbols.
The low-level interface.
Setting up new fonts.
LaTeX's encoding models.
Compatibility packages for very old documents.
8. Higher Mathematics.
Introduction to AMS-LaTeX.
Display and alignment structures for equations.
Matrix-like environments.
Compound symbols, delimiters, and operators.
Variable symbol commands.
Words in mathematics.
Fine tuning mathematical layout.
Fonts in formulas.
Symbols in formulas.
9. LaTeX in a Multilingual Environment.
TeX and non-English languages.
The babel user interface.
User commands provided by language options.
Support for non-Latin alphabets.
Tailoring babel.
Other approaches.
10. Graphics Generation and Manipulation.
Producing portable graphics and ornaments.
LaTeX's device-dependent graphics support.
Manipulating graphical objects in LaTeX.
Display languages: PostScript, PDF, SVG.
11. Index Generation.
Syntax of the index entries.
makeindex--A program to format and sort indices.
xindy--An alternative to MakeIndex.
Enhancing the index with LaTeX features.
12. Managing Citations.
Introduction.
The number-only system.
The author-date system.
The author-number system.
The short-title system.
Multiple bibliographies in one document.
13. Bibliography Generation.
The BibTeX program and some variants.
The BibTeX database format.
Online bibliographies.
Bibliography database management tools.
Formatting the bibliography with BibTeX styles.
The BibTeX style language.
14. LaTeX Package Documentation Tools.
doc--Documenting LaTeX and other code.
docstrip.tex--Producing ready-to-run code.
ltxdoc--A simple LaTeX documentation class.
Making use of version control tools.
A. A LaTeX Overview for Preamble, Package, and Class Writers.
Linking markup and formatting.
Page markup--Boxes and rules.
Control structure extensions.
Package and class file structure.
B. Tracing and resolving problems.
Error messages.
Warnings and informational messages.
TeX and LaTeX commands for tracing.
C. LaTeX Software and User Group information.
Getting help.
How to get those TeX files?.
Using CTAN.
Finding the documentation on your TeX system.
TeX User Groups.
Bibliography.
Index.
About the Authors
Frank Mittelbach is manager of the LaTeX3 Project, in which capacity
he oversaw the release of LaTeX 2e. He is the editor of a series of publications
on tools and techniques for computer typesetting.
Michel Goossens is past president of the TeX Users Group. A research
physicist at CERN, where the Web paradigm was born, he is responsible for LaTeX,
HTML, SGML, and, more recently, XML support for scientific documents.
Customer Reviews
Customer Reviews: 1 Average Customer Rating: Jul 30, 2004 A review from Westfield, NJ, USA
A very good revision of the classic latex reference book.
As an intermediate user of Latex, I have always found the original Latex companion a useful reference for many things that are not in the more elementary books on Latex. In the second edition of the Latex Companion, the presentation and discussions are much improved and the index is greatly improved as well. (An excellent index is a must for a reference book such as this.) The discussion of the variety of packages to streamline your Latex work cannot be found elsewhere.
I highly recommend this book if you are planning to write any sort of Latex document which goes beyond a standard article. If you need to make layout of complex tables and figures, this book explains how to do it. If you are thinking about hacking the latex code to do something you want, chances are it has already been done and is sitting in some package. This book shows gives descriptions of many such popular packages. It is not a beginner's tutorial - for that you'll need something like Lamport's Latex book, or the one by Kopka and Daley.
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