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Practical LaTeX
Grätzer G., Springer Publishing Company, Incorporated, Cham, Switzerland, 2014. 216 pp. Type: Book (978-3-319064-24-6)
Date Reviewed: Dec 24 2014

I will first acknowledge what any reader will surely conclude after reading this review: I am a pedantic and grumpy academic. What other reason could there be for my dismay when faced with a student report or essay that has not been typeset using LaTeX? Or even in poorly created LaTeX? I subscribe to the idea that structuring a document clearly using good sectioning discipline, with well-thought-out environments and commands, and with symbolic references, can make for a more clear, robust, and elegant scientific exposition. Other typesetting approaches have their uses, of course, but the separation between semantic structuring and display directives that is supported by LaTeX can be very rewarding in the long run. However, just like a well-known doll that is said to find mathematics hard, it seems that many students of the “what you see is what you get” generation don’t wish to invest in learning LaTeX enough to use it in a way that will help in their scientific writing. I am forever trying to find ways of impressing upon students the benefits of LaTeX, and of good LaTeX at that.

It is in this spirit that I enthusiastically picked up Grätzer’s latest book on LaTeX. I’ve been looking for a friendly and accessible manual that I could recommend to students as a way to get over the initial learning curve, and this book seemed like it would fit the bill. I particularly liked the idea of chapter 1, “Mission Impossible,” which is about getting started quickly when asked (maybe by a grumpy supervisor like me) to produce a document in LaTeX. The other chapters follow this practical flavor by concentrating on tips and rules to get over some of the common problems faced by writers. The emphasis is on skills necessary for writing and presenting in an academic setting, and in particular it is geared toward students in math, physics, and numerate disciplines. There is considerable emphasis on typesetting mathematical formulae, and there is also an introduction to creating presentations using Beamer. The author makes clear that the book is quite focused: no legacy code, and no coverage of aspects of document creation beyond the kind of outputs expected of a student or researcher within a mathematical discipline.

The book is moderately successful in its objectives. I found that the attempt to keep users from making common mistakes right from the start detracted from the stated objective of giving new users an easy start. For example, while mathematical formulae are no doubt important, it may not be particularly necessary to prevent detailed errors in formulae before explaining the anatomy of a document; it seems to me that many users may first want to include enough text to make a coherent structure and then add in mathematical details. Section headings, list environments, floating figures, and symbolic referencing are given very short shrift, though these are aspects that are crucial for structuring LaTeX documents and should be considered from the start. I am not sure it is necessary to introduce Beamer in “Mission Impossible,” as it is a different type of document and there is a separate chapter for it anyway. And while I am a big fan of meticulously creating pictures in LaTeX, I am not sure that introducing TikZ in this book when there is a goal to be focused on is such a good idea.

In my opinion, the real audience of this book is people like me, people who have been using LaTeX on and off for many years and on the way may have picked up many idioms and tricks, which however may be brittle, inelegant, or have been superseded by new packages and styles. The practical hints are numerous and wide-ranging, and while reading the book I have already made several changes to my personalized style file. An hour or two sitting down with this book is extremely instructive, and I will recommend it to my co-authors whose LaTeX source files I end up having to edit.

Overall, it is a well-presented volume and pleasant to read. There are many kinds of typeset texts, such as practical rules and practical hints, display of the output from LaTeX, raw text in the document source, and so on, so some pages end up looking rather busy, but I am not sure this is avoidable. I found one mistake: surely there is a problem on page 7, where the lineno package is introduced. The text following “and you get:” is wrong (in that there are no line numbers). On the other hand, I did not know about the lineno package and now I do--one of the many things I learned about while reading this book!

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Reviewer:  Sara Kalvala Review #: CR143036 (1504-0273)
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