Digital Typography Using Latex

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
If you have a document that you need to print and it has to look good, or appear in different formats, or contains mathematical symbols, Digital Typography Using Latex can show you how to put it all together. In other words, if you are new to typography, you will appreciate the fact that this book is written in such as way as to allow a novice to learn how to create high-quality documents. Not too easily, though, since the code, and details on how to use it, are contained in free software maintained on various web sites. That said, this book does an outstanding job of looking at what's available in the TEX/LATEX programming language world, letting the reader know how to find and use it. It also points readers to the links/URLs of various web sites that support user groups that can answer specific questions.

For example, Apostolos Syropoulos, Nick Sofroniou, and Antonis Tsolomitis start with a general introduction to LATEX in Chapter 1, discussing the advantages of the logical document preparation versus the visual document preparation. In Chapter 2, they cover requirements for preparing even the simplest document. Next, in Chapter 3, the authors detail issues related to font shapes, series and families. Chapter 4 presents tools that can be used to typeset lists and catalogues as well as poems, quotations, and more. In Chapter 5, the authors describe how to typeset mathematical content using LATEX. Chapter 6 presents all of the LATEX core features that have not been described in the previous five chapters. Then, Chapter 7 presents a number of very useful packages ("systems" that extend the functionality of LATEX) and do not comfortably fit in any other place. In Chapter 9, the authors present a number of tools that allow LATEX users to create simple drawings. Chapter 10 describes all of the currently available tools for typesetting documents in a variety of languages. To err is human, and this is the subject of Chapter 11, wherein the authors present common errors and error recovery strategies. Chapter 12 is devoted to the steps necessary for successfully installing scalable and other new fonts in an existing TEX installation.

This excellent book is a great introduction to the complex world of digital typography and the programming languages that make it possible. If you need to learn to produce high-quality documents and you want to do it using LATEX, this book is an essential tool. John Vacca