> When you're starting out with LaTeX, Leslie
Lamport's LaTeX book covers all the basics, and it
makes a good reference for all of the common things
you'd like to do in LaTeX.
> LaTeX, as it turns out, is a deep rabbit hole.
(It's Turing-complete.) When you're ready for your
black belt in TeX-fu, Donald Knuth's TeXbook is how
you get there.
> This is not an introductory book. This is for
hard-core TeX users.
LaTeX is essentially a macro package on top of TeX
except TeX and/or it's basic macro package Plain had
to be tweaked a little to enable some of the
functionality of LaTeX.
His description of Knuth's The TeXbook is not
correct: The book is nicely "introductory". Also
for an introductory book on a technical topic, the
quality of the writing of this book is excellent,
one of the best, world-class, maybe exemplary.
I read the book in late 1994 in about two weeks and
have used TeX for all my high quality word whacking
since then. I use TeX for all my letters, both
business and personal, used TeX for one peer
reviewed paper in some applied math for a problem in
computer science, and used TeX (to document for
myself) the core, original applied math for my
startup.
I have about 150 macros written in TeX for simple
lists, ordered lists, unordered lists, titles, table
of contents, cross references, various cases of
verbatim (where get to type text that looks like
TeX commands but the text gets treated by TeX just
as-is or verbatim instead of as TeX commands),
some automatic push down stack dynamic storage
that conforms to the scope of names rules of the
nested block structure, etc.
Part of what is good about TeX is the ability to
write macros; any TeX user should be able to write a
macro of a few lines easily as needed, if only for
some one document.
TeX, without LaTeX, is fine, perfectly usable.
And for a "black belt in TeX-fu" read the five
volumes or so of Knuth's detailed documentation of
the source code of both TeX and Metafont.
LaTeX is now quite an advanced macro package, far
beyond my 150 macros or what a user should try to
write for themselves. But, the manuals that
describe LaTeX well are much thicker than Knuth's
The TeXbook and, in my opinion, less well written.
Mostly people who want to do high quality word
whacking, especially with some mathematical
material, with TeX or LaTeX likely should just start
with LaTeX and there maybe the book the OP
recommends, Leslie Lamport's book.
> When you're starting out with LaTeX, Leslie Lamport's LaTeX book covers all the basics, and it makes a good reference for all of the common things you'd like to do in LaTeX.
> LaTeX, as it turns out, is a deep rabbit hole. (It's Turing-complete.) When you're ready for your black belt in TeX-fu, Donald Knuth's TeXbook is how you get there.
> This is not an introductory book. This is for hard-core TeX users.
LaTeX is essentially a macro package on top of TeX except TeX and/or it's basic macro package Plain had to be tweaked a little to enable some of the functionality of LaTeX.
His description of Knuth's The TeXbook is not correct: The book is nicely "introductory". Also for an introductory book on a technical topic, the quality of the writing of this book is excellent, one of the best, world-class, maybe exemplary.
I read the book in late 1994 in about two weeks and have used TeX for all my high quality word whacking since then. I use TeX for all my letters, both business and personal, used TeX for one peer reviewed paper in some applied math for a problem in computer science, and used TeX (to document for myself) the core, original applied math for my startup.
I have about 150 macros written in TeX for simple lists, ordered lists, unordered lists, titles, table of contents, cross references, various cases of verbatim (where get to type text that looks like TeX commands but the text gets treated by TeX just as-is or verbatim instead of as TeX commands), some automatic push down stack dynamic storage that conforms to the scope of names rules of the nested block structure, etc.
Part of what is good about TeX is the ability to write macros; any TeX user should be able to write a macro of a few lines easily as needed, if only for some one document.
TeX, without LaTeX, is fine, perfectly usable.
And for a "black belt in TeX-fu" read the five volumes or so of Knuth's detailed documentation of the source code of both TeX and Metafont.
LaTeX is now quite an advanced macro package, far beyond my 150 macros or what a user should try to write for themselves. But, the manuals that describe LaTeX well are much thicker than Knuth's The TeXbook and, in my opinion, less well written.
Mostly people who want to do high quality word whacking, especially with some mathematical material, with TeX or LaTeX likely should just start with LaTeX and there maybe the book the OP recommends, Leslie Lamport's book.