Carel Fellinger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: CF> You *really* can't do LaTeX without the real book "LaTeX, A CF> document preparation system" by Lamport. At least that has been my CF> experience in twenty odd years of TeXing. And if you're into very CF> arcane type setting you can't do without "The" ultimate "TeXbook", CF> by Knuth himself, either.
These days I mostly find myself using _A Guide to LaTeX_, 3rd Ed. (Helmut Kopka and Patrick W. Daly, Addison-Wesley, 1999, ISBN 0-201-39825-7). It seems to have all of the useful material from the Lamport book, along with useful extracts from _The LaTeX Companion_. When I've looked at it, it's seemed like the _Companion_ has mostly duplicated information available in packages' documentation files (under /usr/share/texmf/doc). I originally got started with "The Not So Short Introduction to LaTeX2e (Or LaTeX2e in 87 Minutes)", which is in /usr/share/texmf/doc/latex/general/lshort.dvi.gz. This, the TeXbook, and a printed and bound copy of the LaTeX2e source gets me along just fine. But then, I probably have several thousand TeXperience points, which probably makes my perspective not quite so useful for a beginner. :-) -- David Maze [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://people.debian.org/~dmaze/ "Theoretical politics is interesting. Politicking should be illegal." -- Abra Mitchell
