TeXbook

Rating:
Summary: Aaack! run away, newbies!
Review: For someone who wishes to make TeX a way of life, ok, this book is probably great. But if you are trying to learn LaTeX so you can typeset a doc the way everyone else does it, check out Lamport's book on LaTeX, and also Goossens. This book is written like a textbook, bringing up everything and never getting to "So you want to do this? Ok, here's how." F'get about it!

Rating:
Summary: Aaack! run away, newbies!
Review: For someone who wishes to make TeX a way of life, ok, this book is probably great. But if you are trying to learn LaTeX so you can typeset a doc the way everyone else does it, check out Lamport's book on LaTeX, and also Goossens. This book is written like a textbook, bringing up everything and never getting to "So you want to do this? Ok, here's how." F'get about it!

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, but weak as a reference
Review: I bought the TeXbook two years ago, but finally spent a few days reading it cover to cover -- and I am impressed. As many others, I started exploring plain TeX because I wanted more from LaTeX. I was surprised to find how simple and, yes, *elegant* TeX is in comparison. I guess TeX is to LaTeX as C is to C++. Certainly do not buy this book if you just want to use LaTeX!

The writing is superb, full of fine detail and more than a few clever jokes. Why can't recent books about modern systems be so delightful? Maybe David Pogue's Missing Manual series comes close, but the topics are not quite as technical.

As a reference, the TeXbook is weak because each command or concept is scattered across so many places: one introductory chapter, one summary chapter, in exercises, in "dangerous bend" passages, and so on. I believe the book is best organized for front to back reading, although probably in two or three passes if you include the dangerous bends. For reference, I prefer TeX by Topic by Victor Eijkhout. It is out of print, but available for download on his web site.

The paperback edition of the TeXbook is spiral bound. I appreciate that it lays flat, but the back pages are always falling out of the binding!

Rating:
Summary: Brilliant, but weak as a reference
Review: I bought the TeXbook two years ago, but finally spent a few days reading it cover to cover -- and I am impressed. As many others, I started exploring plain TeX because I wanted more from LaTeX. I was surprised to find how simple and, yes, *elegant* TeX is in comparison. I guess TeX is to LaTeX as C is to C++. Certainly do not buy this book if you just want to use LaTeX!

The writing is superb, full of fine detail and more than a few clever jokes. Why can't recent books about modern systems be so delightful? Maybe David Pogue's Missing Manual series comes close, but the topics are not quite as technical.

As a reference, the TeXbook is weak because each command or concept is scattered across so many places: one introductory chapter, one summary chapter, in exercises, in "dangerous bend" passages, and so on. I believe the book is best organized for front to back reading, although probably in two or three passes if you include the dangerous bends. For reference, I prefer TeX by Topic by Victor Eijkhout. It is out of print, but available for download on his web site.

The paperback edition of the TeXbook is spiral bound. I appreciate that it lays flat, but the back pages are always falling out of the binding!

Rating:
Summary: A must have for all TeX users
Review: LaTeX that most peoples prefer to TeX is useful for reams of technical paper where quality doesn't matter (reports, notes, thesis), but without turning to a professional typesetter, you cannot attain good results without a serious commitment to the study of TeX.

The TeXbook is what you need for this purpose. If you do not intend to go beyond the dangerous bend, you may find LaTeX more suited to your needs.

Secondary, it can serves as a model for writers of technical books, with its index, clarity and organization (Knuth's style put apart, of course--for this one being sometime excessive, I would rate this book only 4.9/5)

Rating:
Summary: Excellent. The definitive work on th subject.
Review: Whatever you might think of TeX (work of genius to heinous hack seems to be roughly the range of common views), this is the definitive work by the designer of the system. It also contains jokes, which is good.

It is also a good expose of the warped and perfectionist mind of Don Knuth, but that's a separate matter.

Rating:
Summary: If you use TeX, this is the one indispensable reference.
Review: While I have to give this book a 10, it is only fair to mention that there are many who find it impossible to read. Knuth wrote three books simultaneously: a guide to TeX for the nontechnical (typesetters, academic department secretaries), for the technical (computer scientists, mathematicians), and for the expert (Knuth himself).

II you are coming to this book for the first time, follow Knuth's advice and ignore the "dangerous bends."

Knuth is one of the world's leading computer scientists and TeX is his most famous program. It is extremely rare for a programmer at Knuth's level to write the documentation -- and rarer still for him to succeed.

However, after you've read this book, and before you decide that you know everything there is to know about design and typography, please read "The Elements of Typographic Style" by Robert Bringhurst

Rating:
Summary: Detailed, but poorly organized
Review: While this book is fairly detailed, and covers the method TeX processes lines completely, it is for the most part poorly organized. It seems to be intended more as a tutorial than as a reference.

The more advanced methods are interspersed in an almost haphazard way with the beginning techniques. Simple typesetting problems like creating multiple columns, changing margins, and using a different font size are covered very obliquely, and it takes multiple readings to figure out how to do such things.

However, the section on creating mathematical equations is very well done, and I was soon able to master very complicated formatting. The book also talks about "proper" typesetting--the three different dashes and when to use them, the difference between spacing after an abreviation and a sentence-ending period, etc. I only wish Knuth had included all those great tidbits in a table somewhere--sometimes it can take quite a long time to hunt down the information.

TeX is a wonderful typestting language that is great for anything from math reports to psychology research papers, to book typesetting. Unfortunately this book does a poor job of explaining the language, and is not a good reference for someone who is familiar with it.