Book Info
Provides expert advice on using Latex's basic formatting tools for creating all types of publications. Includes in-depth coverage of important extension packages for tabular and technical typesetting. Previous edition: c1994. Softcover.

From the Back Cover

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.



About the Author
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.

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Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

A full decade has passed since the publication of the first edition of The LATEX Companion--a decade during which some people prophesied the demise of TEX and LaTEX and predicted that other software would take over the world. There have been a great many changes indeed, but neither prediction has come to pass: TEX has not vanished and the interest in LaTEX has not declined, although the approach to both has gradually changed over time.

When we wrote the Companion in 1993, we intended to describe what is usefully available in the LaTEX world (though ultimately we ended up describing what was available at CERN in those days). As an unintentional side effect, the first edition defined for most readers what should be available in a then-modern LaTEX distribution. Fortunately, most of the choices we made at that time proved to be reasonable, and the majority (albeit not all) of the packages described in the first edition are still in common use today. Thus, even though "the book shows its age, it still remains a solid reference in most parts", as one reviewer put it recently.

Nevertheless, much has changed and a lot of new and exciting functionality has been added to LaTEX during the last decade. As a result, while revising the book we ended up rewriting 90% of the original content and adding about 600 additional pages describing impressive new developments.

What you are holding now is essentially a new book--a book that we hope preserves the positive aspects of the first edition even as it greatly enhances them, while at the same time avoiding the mistakes we made back then, both in content and presentation (though doubtless we made some others). For this book we used the CTAN archives as a basis and also went through the comp.text.tex news group archives to identify the most pressing questions and queries.

In addition to highlighting a good selection of the contributed packages available on the CTAN archives, the book describes many aspects of the basic LaTEX system that are not fully covered in the LATEX Manual, Leslie Lamport's LATEX: A Document Preparation System. Note, however, that our book is not a replacement for the LATEX Manual but rather a companion to it: a reader of our book is assumed to have read at least the first part of that book (or a comparable introductory work, such as the Guide to LATEX) and to have some practical experience with producing LaTEX documents.

The second edition has seen a major change in the authorship; Frank took over as principal author (so he is to blame for all the faults in this book) and several members of the LaTEX3 project team joined in the book's preparation, enriching it with their knowledge and experience in individual subject areas. The preparation of the book was overshadowed by the sudden death of our good friend, colleague, and prospective co-author Michael Downes, whose great contributions to LaTEX, andAMS-LaTEX in particular, are well known to many people. We dedicate this book to him and his memory.

Frank Mittelbach
Michel Goossens
Johannes Braams
David Carlisle
Chris Rowley
February 2004

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ANNOTATION

This companion to Lamport's LaTeX book introduces tools and techniques that will enhance your use of LaTeX and help you format documents more quickly and more efficiently. After positioning standard LaTeX in the framework of the TeX program and its associated utilities, the author shows how to customize commands and environments to suit your needs.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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.

SYNOPSIS

For this second edition of a book/CD-ROM package, Mittelbach, author or coauthor of numerous LaTeX extension packages, incorporates major developments in LaTeX that have occurred over the past 10 years, covering the core of LaTeX and many extensions. Readers are assumed to have read at least the first part of the LaTeX Manual or a comparable introductory work. The CD-ROM contains a complete, ready- to-run LaTeX installation for Windows and Linux, all the packages described in the book, and 900 examples from the book which illustrate solutions to typographical and technical problems. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

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