Guide to TeX, LaTeX, Metafont, etc.

• Geoscience
• Metasites
• Books
• Freely available documentation
  • General (overviews, tutorials, etc.)
  • Specific (macro packages, etc.)

Geoscience

Special TeX packages for geoscience journals.

LaTeX Files for American Meteorological Society (AMS) Publications

This unofficial collection contains:

• ametsoc.sty - Implements the AMS requirements and is mean to be used in an article documentclass.
• ametsoc.bib - A natbib.bst derivative implementing AMS-style citations.
• ametsoc.perl - Provides hooks for using the package with LaTeX2HTML

AMS Meeting Long Abstract and Journal Article Macros

An unofficial collection containing:

• AMS Meeting long abstract macros hacked from article.cls.
• AMS journal article macros hacked from aguplus.

AGUTeX Macros for American Geophysical Union (AGU) Publications

This official collection contains:

• agu2001.cls - A LaTeX2e class file.
• agu2001.sty - A LaTeX 2.09 style file.
• agums.sty - A LaTeX 2.09 manuscript style file.
• template_2e.tex - A template file for making an article.
• sample.tex - A sample file showing different title page styles and other package-specific commands.
• agu.bst - A bibliography style file.
• agufull.bst - An alternative bibliography style file.
• aguplus.cls - The AGU++ LaTeX2e class file (see below).
• agu-ps.sty - A PostScript font file.
• graphics.zip - Graphics files for including .eps files.
• figsamp.tex - A figure sample file.

AGU++ Macros for AGU Publications

This unofficial collection contains:

• aguplus.cls - A LaTeX2e class file.
• aguplus.sty - A LaTeX 2.09 style file.
• aguplus.tex - A manual to be processed under AGUTeX and AGU++.
• samplus.tex - A sample paper.
• agu.bst - A bibliography style with AGU formats.
• agufull.bst - An alternative to agu.bst that lists all authors (when there are more than nine).
• geophys.tex - A list of the shorthand journal names used in agu.bst.
• sample.bib - A BibTeX data base for use with samplus.tex.

IEEE Transactions LaTeX Style Files

An IEEE package for "IEEE Transactions on Geoscience and Remote Sensing".

BibTeX and LaTeX Style Formats for Molecular Biologists

A remarkable compilation of LaTeX information for a goodly number of journals frequented by molecular biologists and similar beasties.

Canadian Journal of Physics

International Union of Crystallography Journals

Journal of Japan Society of Applied Electromagnetics and Mechanics

Journal of Logic Programming

Journal of Optical Networking

Optics Express

Metasites

TeX User's Group (TUG)

The home site of the first and biggest TeX user's group.

CTAN (Comprehensive TeX Archive Network)

A Web interface to a set of FTP sites providing the most complete and up-to-date TeX-related software. This is both browsable and searchable.

Text Processing using LaTeX

A page created at the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge. They've got all the usual good links as well as some very nice documentation created onsite.

LaTeX Navigator

A veritable online encyclopedia of information about LaTeX.

Books

TeXbook - Donald E. Knuth

The original TeX book.

LaTeX: A Document Preparation System (2nd Edition) - Leslie Lamport

The second edition of the original LaTeX book.

A Plain TeX Primer - Malcolm Clark

TeX by Topic: A TeXnician's Reference - Victor Eijkhout

This out-of-print book is available in PDF format.

1. The structure of the TeX processor
2. Category codes and internal states
3. Characters
4. Fonts
5. Boxes
6. Horizontal and vertical mode
7. Numbers
8. Dimensions and glue
9. Rules and leaders
10. Grouping
11. Macros
12. Expansion
13. Conditionals
14. Token lists
15. Baseline distances
16. Paragraph start
17. Paragraph end
18. Paragraph shape
19. Line breaking
20. Spacing
21. Characters in math mode
22. Fonts in formulas
23. Mathematics typesetting
24. Display math
25. Alignment
26. Page shape
27. Page breaking
28. Output routines
29. Insertions
30. File input and output
31. Allocation
32. Running TeX
33. TeX and the outside world
34. Tracing
35. Errors, catastrophes and help
36. The grammar of TeX
37. Glossary of TeX primitives
38. References
39. Tables

First Steps in LaTeX - George Gratzer

Learning LaTeX - D. F. Griffiths and D. J. Higham

LaTeX for Scientists and Engineers - David J. Buerger

Pages: 198
Year: 1990
ISBN: 0-07-008845-4
Publisher: McGraw-Hill

1. Technical word processing and typography
2. Features overview
3. Beginning concepts
4. Formatting environments
5. Changing the appearance of type
6. Simple math typesetting
7. Complex math typesetting
8. Tables and figures
9. Footnotes and cross-references
10. Organizing a document
11. Creating a bibliography
12. Creating a glossary and index
13. Two-column documents
14. Special operations
15. Deciphering error messages

• A. Answers to chapter exercises
• B. Sample input files
• C. Mathematical symbols
• D. Custom font sizes

Math into LaTeX (3rd Ed.) - George Gratzer

Part I of the second edition of this book is available online.

The Advanced TeXbook - David S. Salomon

1. Introduction
2. Advanced introduction
3. Boxes and glue
4. Paragraphs
5. Macros
6. Conditionals
7. Examples of macros
8. Tokens and file I/O
9. Multipass jobs
10. Special topics
11. Leaders
12. Tables
13. Advanced math
14. Line and page breaks
15. Handling errors
16. Output routines
17. OTR techniques
18. Insertions
19. Example format

LaTeX for Linux - Bernice S. Lipkin

LaTeX Line by Line: Tips and Techniques for Document Processing (2nd Ed.) - Antoni Diller

1. Why use it?
2. Getting started
3. Fancy prose
4. List-like environments
5. Boxes and tables
6. Making bibliographies
7. Making indexes
8. Standard document classes
9. Basic mathematical formatting
10. More mathematical formatting
11. Introducing AMS-LaTeX
12. Simple diagrams
13. Mathematical symbols
14. Useful notions
15. Glossary
16. When things go wrong

A Guide to LaTeX (3rd Ed.) - Helmut Kopka and Patrick W. Daly

Quite simply the best single LaTeX manual I've yet encountered, and I've encountered most of them. Read the preface and/or get it at Amazon.

Chapters:

1. Introduction
2. Commands and environments
3. Document layout and organization
4. Displayed text
5. Mathematical formulas
6. Illustrations
7. User customization
8. Advanced features
9. Error messages

Appendices:

• A. Letters
• B. Bibliographic databases
• C. LaTeX programming
• D. LaTeX extensions
• E. Math extensions with AMS-LaTeX
• F. TeX fonts
• G. Command summary

TeX for the Impatient - P. Abrahams, K. Berry, K. Hargreaves

Brief and thorough descriptions of the use of all TeX commands. Published in 1990 by Addison-Wesley.

1. Using this book
2. Using TeX
3. Examples
4. Concepts
5. Commands for composing paragraphs
6. Commands for composing pages
7. Commands for horizontal and vertical modes
8. Commands for composing math formulas
9. Commands for general operations
10. Tips and techniques
11. Making sense of error messages
12. A compendium of useful macros
13. Capsule summary of commands

The LaTeX Companion - M. Goossens, F. Mittelbach, A. Samarin

The 528 page basic reference guide and tutorial to the use of LaTeX2e. The chapters cover introductory material, LaTeX document structure, basic formatting tools, page layout, tabular material, mastering floats, font selection, higher mathematics, multilingual environments, portable graphics, using PostScript, index generation, bibliography generation, and LaTeX package file documentation tools. This covers the basic LaTeX2e as well as many of the more useful ancillary packages. Published in 1994 by Addison-Wesley.

Chapters::

1. Introduction
2. The structure of a LaTeX document
   • The structure of a source file
   • Logical structure
   • Sectioning commands
   • Structure of the table of contents
   • Managing references
3. Basic formatting tools
4. The layout of the page
5. Tabular material
6. Mastering floats
7. Font selection
8. Higher mathematics
9. LaTeX in a multilingual environment
10. Portable graphics in LaTeX
11. Using PostScript
12. Index generation
13. Bibliography generation
14. LaTeX package file documentation tools

Appendices:

• A. A LaTeX overview for package and class writers
• B. TeX archive site

The LaTeX Graphics Companion - Michel Goossens, Sebastian Rahtz and Frank Mittelbach

1. Graphics with LaTeX
2. The LaTeX2e graphics bundle
3. Working with Metafont and Metapost
4. Harnessing PostScript inside LaTeX: the PSTricks package
5. The Xy-pic package
6. Applications in chemistry, physics and engineering (XyMTeX, PPCHTeX, FeynMF)
7. Preparing music scores (MusiXTeX, abc2mtex, MPP)
8. Playing games
9. The world of color
10. Using PostScript fonts
11. PostScript drivers and tools

The LaTeX Web Companion - Michel Goossens, S. P. O. Rahtz, Ross Moore and Robert S. Sutor

1. The Web, its documents, and LaTeX
2. Portable Document Format
3. The LaTeX2HTML translator
4. Translating LaTeX to HTML using TeX4ht
5. Direct display of LaTeX on the Web
6. HTML, SGML and XML: three markup languages
7. CSS, DSSSL and XSL: doing it with style
8. MathML, intelligent math markup

The Joy of TeX: A Gourmet Guide to Typesetting with the AMSTeX Macro Package (2nd Ed.) - M. D. Spivak

1. Learning TeX's lingo - Ordinary text and control sequences
2. Printers do it with all types - Changing fonts
3. Your first TeX experience - Running a file through TeX
4. TeX's erroneous zones - Error messages, and how to respond to them
5. Spaces that separate, ties that bind - Subtleties of spacing and line breaking
6. Doing it with elan - Special symbols and accents
7. TeX's brand of mathematics - Mathematical formulas in text
8. Lousy breaks? Try an artful display - Displayed formulas
9. The 2nd level of complexity - Superscripts and subscripts
10. Our problems mount - Fractions, binomial coefficients, etc.
11. Benefitting from TeX's largesse - Large operators
12. Creating your own space - Controlling spacing in mathematical formulas
13. Fascinating things that expand by themselves - Delimiters and other variable size symbols
14. A Roman orgy - Roman type in formulas
15. Keeping them in line - Numbering formulas and aligning equations in a display
16. Too much of a good thing - Breaking formulas that are too long
17. Sophisticated positions - Matrices
18. Practicing self control - Defining new control sequences
19. eX-rated features - A dictionary of special TeXniques

TeX and LaTeX: Drawing and Literate Programming - Eitan Gurari

1. Getting started
   TeX and LaTeX
   
2. Writing without special features
3. Basic commands
4. Mathematical formulas
5. LaTeX
   Low-Level Drawing Facilities
   
6. Basic drawing facilities
7. Add-On features
8. Coordinate systems
9. Repetitions
10. Creating new features
11. Arithmetic and options
    High-Level Drawing Facilities
    
12. AlDraTeX
13. Pie charts
14. X-Y charts
15. Bar charts
16. Elements of diagrams
17. Spread diagrams
18. Grid diagram
19. Tree diagrams
20. Creating new types of nodes and labels
    Literate Programming
    
21. The concept of literate programming
22. ProTeX: A literate programming system
    Appendixes

• A. Implementation of ProTeX
• B. PostScript figures with TeX documents
• C. Catalog of commands
• D. Bibliography
• E. Access to packages

Writing with TeX - Eitan Gurari

TeX by Example: A Beginner's Guide - Arvind Borde

Mathematical TeX by Example - Arvind Borde

TeX Unbound: LaTeX and TeX Strategies for Fonts, Graphics, and More - A. Hoenig

A 640 page guide to using LaTeX that additionally provides details on how to integrate TeX with other commercially available hardware and software as well as solutions to many common problems. The chapters cover introductory material, the Internet and multimedia, METAFONT, logical documents, TeX in the workplace, installing and selecting fonts, virtual fonts, virtual font projects, new math fonts, a graphics overview, using graphics packages, using METAFONT and MetaPost, PSTricks, and MFPic pictures. Published in 1998 by the Oxford University Press.

1. About TeX and LaTeX
   • An overview
   • A brief history of TeX
   • The TeX life cycle
   • A working TeX system
   • Getting TeX
   • Installing and running TeX
   • Inking the page
   • Document files
   • Friends of TeX
   • Learning and joining
   • Appendix: Scalable typography
2. TeX, the Internet and multimedia
   • Internet resources
   • The World Wide Web and hypertext
   • CD-ROMs
3. Mostly Metafont
   • Installing Metafont
   • Running Metafont
   • Some Metafont conventions
   • Metafont as graphics engine
   • Meta-ness
   • Computer Modern fonts
   • PostScript and Metafont
   • MetaPost
   • Other Metafont work
   • Learning more about Metafont
4. Logical documents via LaTeX
   • What is logical document structure?
   • LaTeX
   • LaTeX conventions
   • Modifying LaTeX commands
   • Other structure macro packages
     • Extended plain macros
     • The texinfo system
5. TeX in the workplace
   • Word processors
   • Spreadsheets
   • Hypertext
   • TeX in science
6. Installing and selecting fonts
   • Preliminaries
   • Naming digital fonts
   • Font installation
   • Plain TeX font selection
   • The New Font Selection Scheme
   • NFSS: High-level commands
   • NFSS: Mid-level commands
   • NFSS: Low-level font interface
7. Virtual fonts, virtuous fonts
   • The virtual-font concept
   • Digital fonts and font tables
   • What comprises a digital font?
   • What we will need: preparation
   • The purpose of a simple installation
   • Introduction to fontinst
   • Simple font installation with fontinst
   • Progressive examples
   • More virtual-font projects
   • Appendix: summary of all fontinst commands
8. Virtual-font projects
   • Getting started
   • Underline and strikeout fonts
   • Poor man's bold fonts
   • f-words
   • Composite fonts
   • New encodings, alternate fonts
   • Two advanced projects
9. More virtual fonts
   • Letterspacing and tracking
   • Previewing PostScript: Hardware strategies
   • Previewing PostScript: Software strategies
   • Proper (optical) sizing of fonts
   • Appendix: Installings Times New Roman
10. New math fonts
    • Scalable Computer Modern fonts
    • Computer Modern math plus new text fonts
    • New math raw fonts
    • The MathInst utility
    • New math virtual fonts with MathInst
    • Fine tuning the new math fonts
    • New math fonts via Metafont
    • Rogues' gallery
11. Graphic discussions
    • General graphics
    • Graphic inclusions
    • PSfrag
12. Graphics via TeX and LaTeX
    • Coordinate geometry
    • The LaTeX picture environment and extensions
    • PICTeX
13. Using Metafont and Metapost
    • Basics
    • Paths into pictures
    • Calculating
    • Uses and applications
    • Simple transformations
    • Just MetaPost
    • Prettyprinting
    • Appendix: summary of MetaPost
14. PSTricks
    • Essentials
    • Getting started
    • About PSTricks coordinate systems
    • Elementary examples
    • More advanced examples
    • Text connections
    • Repetition
    • Other tricks
    • Late-breaking news
    • Appendix 1: Some PSTricks projects
    • Appendix 2: PSTricks commands and parameters
15. Mfpic pictures
    • Getting started
    • The mfpic process
    • Appendix: mfpic reference

TeX for the Beginner - W. Snow

A 325 page book for raw beginners. Published in 1992 by Addison-Wesley.

Digital Typography Using LaTeX - Apostolos Syropoulos, Nick Sofroniou and Antonis Tsolomitis

1. Introduction
2. Document structure
3. Fonts
4. List environments
5. Mathematical text
6. General document preparation
7. Preparing the bibliography and indices
8. Additional packages
9. Graphics
10. LaTeX speaks many languages
11. To err is human
12. Advanced typography

LaTex for Everyone: A Reference Guide and Tutorial for Typesetting Documents Using a Computer - Jane Hahn

LaTeX Notes: Practical Tips for Preparing Technical Documents - J. Kenneth Shultis

A Beginner's Book of TeX - Raymond Seroul and Silvio Levy

Pages: 282
Year: 1995
Publisher: Springer-Verlag
ISBN: 0-387-97562-4

TeX in Practice, Vol. I: Basics - Stephen V. Bechtolsheim and David F. Rogers

Pages: 386
Year: 1994
Publisher: Springer-Verlag
ISBN: 0-387-97595-0

TeX in Practice, Vol. II: Paragraphs, Math and Fonts - Stephen V. Bechtolsheim and David F. Rogers

Pages: 368
Year: 1994
Publisher: Springer-Verlag
ISBN: 0-387-97596-9

TeX in Practice, Vol. III: Tokens, Macros - Stephen V. Bechtolsheim and David F. Rogers

Pages: 656
Year: 1994
Publisher: Springer-Verlag
ISBN: 0-387-97597-7

TeX in Practice, Vol. IV: Output Routines, Tables - Stephen V. Bechtolsheim and David F. Rogers

Pages: 422
Year: 1993
Publisher: Springer-Verlag
ISBN: 0-387-97598-5

Making TeX Work - Norman Walsh

A guide to the pragmatic problems of installing and running TeX. This was originally published by O'Reilly & Associates but is currently (12/1997) out of print. An online edition is available.

An introduction to TeX

1. The big picture
2. Editing
3. Running TeX
4. Macro packages
   
   • Plain TeX - The format written by Donald Knuth while developing TeX. It ties together the TeX primitives to make it practical, i.e. easier, to work with TeX.
   • Extended Plain TeX - Sort of a hybrid of Plain TeX and LaTeX. It extends the former and doesn't force you to accept the latter's notion of what typeset pages should look like.
   • LaTeX - A set of macros for what is called structured document preparation.
   • AMSTeX - Macros to make it easier to typeset mathematical papers in TeX. A sort of proto-LaTeX with various math enhancements.
   • AMSLaTeX - An extension of LaTeX that provides the functionality of AMSTeX in LaTeX syntax, and access to additional mathematical constructs and math symbols not present in LaTeX.
   • Lollipop - A set of macros to make it easy to change and customize document styles.
   • TeXinfo - A set of macros to produce both online and typeset documentation from the same source.
   • TeXsis - Macros for typesetting articles, papers and theses, specially tuned for physics.
   Elements of a complex document
   
5. Fonts
6. Pictures and figures
7. International considerations
8. Printing
9. Previewing
10. Online documentation
11. Introducing MetaFont
12. Bibliographies, indexes, and glossaries
    A tools overview
    
13. Non-commercial environments
14. Commercial environments
15. TeX on the Macintosh
16. TeX utilities

[ home ]