Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!uw-june!uw-entropy!mica!charlie
From: charlie@mica.stat.washington.edu (Charlie Geyer)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: yet another new TeX user aghast at the "TeXBook" !!!!!!
Message-ID: <1404@uw-entropy.ms.washington.edu>
Date: 29 Apr 89 20:25:54 GMT
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Reply-To: charlie@mica.stat.washington.edu (Charlie Geyer)
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In article <3847@utastro.UUCP> hgcjr@utastro.UUCP (Harold G. Corwin Jr.) 
writes:

> But easy?  TeX?  No way.  Made any easier using the TeXbook?  Only if 
> your job is typesetting and you're being paid to wade through a jungle 
> of lions and dangerous curves.  End of flame.

Unless you write mathematics.  Then chapters 16--19 of the {\TeX}book
are {\it must\/} reading.

Having digested them, the mathematics you typeset yourself will be
better than that set by all but a handful of publishing houses.

The \LaTeX\ manual is simply insufficient.  It doesn't even cover putting 
thin spaces in such simple formulas as
\[ {\cal F} = \{\, f_\theta : \theta \in \Theta \,\} \]
and
\[ \int f \, d\mu \]
or the double quad space in
\[ \theta_i \le \theta_{i+1}, \qquad i = 1, \ldots, n-1. \]

No reason why it should of course.

You also have to read the {\TeX}book if you want to get into modifying
what \LaTeX\ does.  I agree with Lamport that this is almost always a
bad idea unless you are a professional book designer or are forced to
make modifications to satisfy some externally imposed requirements,
say for a thesis or for submission to a journal.

Still most new users have hardly learned what \verb@\begin{document}@
means before they want to modify the whole format.  (I did myself, but
now I know better).  The {\TeX}book shows them how or convinces them
to give up.