Rating: 
Summary: Advanced LATEX guide
Review: The companion to the book "LATEX" by Leslie Ramport. Many topics which are not or only sparely covered in Leslie Ramports book, are here dealt with in depth and with creat clarity. It contains a lot of examples with both, LATEX code and how it would look printed.It contains the following chapters: 1.) Introduction, 2.) The Structure of a LATEX Document, 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, A.) A LATEX Overview for Package and Class Writers, B.) TEX Archive Sites.
Rating:
Summary: Advanced LATEX guide
Review: The companion to the book "LATEX" by Leslie Ramport. Many topics which are not or only sparely covered in Leslie Ramports book, are here dealt with in depth and with creat clarity. It contains a lot of examples with both, LATEX code and how it would look printed. It contains the following chapters: 1.) Introduction, 2.) The Structure of a LATEX Document, 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, A.) A LATEX Overview for Package and Class Writers, B.) TEX Archive Sites.
Rating:
Summary: Review of *Current* Edition (the second edition)
Review: The second edition of The LaTeX Companion is a thorough rewrite of the first edition. If you're seeking a single source for improving your LaTeX documents (in ways you never imagined), this is your book. It is really a tour de force in technical documentation and clearly a labor of love from its numerous authors. The extensive coverage of packages and the examples are very useful. In addition, every example is provided in the CD that comes with the manual. The CD also includes a complete LaTeX installation. You will not find a better text for working with LaTeX and I highly recommend it.
PS I've been using LaTeX since 1990 and am familiar with all the principal manuals.
Rating: 
Summary: useless as reference
Review: This book is pretty much useless as a reference. I bought this book as a reference for my next big document (I'm using LaTeX for some 8 years). Unfortunately I found that the index in this book is virtually useless. Yes, it does refer you to pages in the text that contain the word you are looking for, but that's as far as it goes.
"Explanations" that I did find are generally anything but intuitive, often enough sections never truly deal with what the headline suggests. One star for the examples, that I use as a guide. But generally this book keeps the wood of my shelf from fading.
Rating: 
Summary: not for anyone
Review: This book is such a hack it would be more useful if presented in typeset LaTeX. It has no breadth, no sense of coverage. It's not a matter of being for advanced users, it's a matter of being hacked together from digital scraps instead of properly written. It's the worst. Stick to Lamport and web sources, these guys obviously publish for their resumes. No doubt the authors are great LaTeX hackers, but unfortunately it appears that they are only that. Hackers. Yes, I am frustrated with this book. When I want to do something in LaTeX (which I've been using for five years) and refer to this title, the index is useless, instead I take the hacker's approach and treat it not as literature but as source code. I scan it. Unfortunately I can't grep it. Frankly I don't understand how others could give it high ratings. I think they're too easily impressed. This book is not even consistent within a page. I wonder, "Did you read it?" The examples don't even compile half the time! Too bad it's not just LaTeX source cover to cover. That would be much more useful, and a much better value for the thing. The one thing this book (and this series no doubt) has is lots of pictures describing layout. I don't know how good they are, I don't fiddle with bits. The authors' three books should have been one good book on what they really want to present. Graphics.
Rating:
Summary: For it's topic, extremely complete
Review: This is a very complete concise reference to the PACKAGES of LaTeX. It won't teach you well how to use LaTeX, but more how to use all of the standard packages. It is far more of a reference book than a read-to-learn book. An excellent reference book at that.
Rating:
Summary: Well written, deep LaTeX walkthrough and reference
Review: This is an amazing piece of work. It's obviously a well refined second edition where the authors have listened to the readers and understand how to present this very deep information in a lightweight informative way. I can't imagine any more material that could be poured into this book. Which isn't to say that the book is a dumping ground of material, what is in there is all well organized and integrated.
What's more, the formatting of the book itself stands as an example of design to be aspired to.
This is a phenomenal piece of work. It gets my highest recommendation. This is a fantastic book for anyone who uses TeX seriously. For those looking to start with TeX you should probably AW's Guide To LaTeX as well as this book.
Rating:
Summary: An Outstanding Book
Review: This is, by far, the most useful book I own. The first edition was great, the second edition is nothing short of spectacular. The two-color print is very helpful. Compared to the first edition, which I've been using for just about seven years, the updated package descriptions in the new edition improved my typesetting substantially within only a few days after I got it. Well worth it's price. I hope the authors make a good buck on this, since they are making my life so much easier.
The stated intention of the book not withstanding, I think this is all you'll ever need to use LaTeX, no matter how serious a user you are. Well, maybe a two-page primer of the basic commands in addition. Anyway, I've never used Kopka's book and I never touched Lamport's. Not because they're bad, but because I never had to.
The one small issue I have with the second edition: where did the cute pooch on the cover go?
Rating: 
Summary: Agree about frustrating aspects, but more depth than kopka
Review: Yeah, the index is pretty appalling; yeah, learning LaTeX via this route was rough; nevertheless, short of trying to decipher the minimally commented LaTeX source code, it's the only place to find a wide variety of facts. Speaking of the source code, isn't it about time that someone wrote up a nice thorough plain-English description of what exactly LaTeX contributes to TeX, and how it does it? That way there would be a way to learn everything at the highest level: read the TeXbook, then read what I envisage. At present, the vast number of `@'-commands, which you need to grasp for writing macros, aren't documented anywhere outside of the source code. Also, does anyone know the inside scoop on the progress of NTS/LaTeX3?
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