Synopsis
This book explores a great number of concepts, methods, technologies, and tools-in one word resources-that apply to various domains of typesetting. These resources have been developed and are used by the members of a very special community of people, which is also a community of very special people: the T^X community. To understand the motivation that led these special people to develop and use these resources, I believe it is necessary to make a short flashback. Since it is true that the past (uniquely?) determines the present and the future, I decided to divide this foreword into three parts: The Past, The Present, and The Future. At this point, I am asking the readers to excuse my tendency of sometimes becoming autobiographic. This is very hard to avoid when talking about people and events important to one's life, and, after all, avoiding it could mean betraying the subject I would like to talk about.
Synopsis
The purpose of the book is to introduce new users to the use of the TeX system, in particular document preparation using LaTeX. It seeks to avoid the pitfalls of having to search through several advanced books on the subject, by collecting together the more frequently required tools and presenting these in a single accessible volume. It will also describe the recent developments in multilingual typesetting using TeX that now make it straightforward for users to prepare documents in their own language and alphabet, giving the book a global readership. The main presentation will be independent of any particular type of computer hardware, though a section will contain details of some of the more popular versions of TeX for each type of machine and details of where they can be downloaded on the Internet from, or purchased at low cost on a convenient compact disk. Topics and features: multi-lingual uses of LaTeX; discussion of hardware implementations; use and misuse of particular LaTeX commands; some treatment of graphics; inclusion of exercises with solutions*discussion of common errors; inclusion of many examples.
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