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From: ews@Gregorio.Stanford.EDU (Ed Sznyter)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: yet another new TeX user aghast at the "TeXBook" !!!!!!
Message-ID: <8787@polya.Stanford.EDU>
Date: 26 Apr 89 19:25:11 GMT
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Reply-To: ews@Pescadero.Stanford.EDU (Ed Sznyter)
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In article <1393@uw-entropy.ms.washington.edu> charlie@mica.stat.washington.edu (Charlie Geyer) writes:
>
>Now three flames of the TeXbook for not being a primer.
>
>Knuth's writing is an aquired taste.  Perhaps I would have been more
>bothered by the TeXbook if I were not so familiar with the Art of
>Computer Programming.  The TeXbook is a very good book.  It was clearly
>the right first book to write about TeX.  It is a complete reference
>manual.  It is perhaps the best documentation of a complex computer
>system ever written.  That it is not suitable for tyros is not even
>interesting.

	The TeXbook is suitable {\em only} for tyros.  It is a gradual
	introduction to an extremely complex program, written to
	prompt reading from cover to cover.  While complete, the
	information is sorted by the order of complexity.  A reference
	manual must be designed to allow efficent access to the
	information; certainly these two styles are at odds in the
	TeXbook.

	The LaTeX book is written in the same style as the TeXbook;
	however, the higher-level abstractions implemented reduce the
	amount of information to a more manageable form, and the index
	has less of a shotgun pattern.  But this is a function of
	subject, not style.

	I've used TeX for 11 years.  When I want to know something, I
	usually end up reading latex.tex or ``TeX: The Program.''
	The unsuitability (real or imagined) of the TeXbook is of
	interest to many people.