[Tex/LaTex] Help in choosing LaTeX2e books in light of LaTeX3 development

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I'm quite new to LaTeX (~3 months) and I'm excited about buying the books. I just bought The TeXbook on eBay and hopefully it should arrive next week. I might even want to get a printed copy of TeX by Topic since I'm not a big fan of reading on-screen. Next in line, I want to get either The LaTeX Companion or Guide to LaTeX.

  1. Is it too late to get hold of the LaTeX2e-related books considering LaTeX3 is coming (though I don't know of any time frame yet)?

  2. Kindly enlighten me on the following assumptions. From what I've read around here, I have a general feeling that:

    • The TeXbook and The LaTeX Companion lean on a more narrative style
    • TeX by Topic and Guide to LaTeX read more like a reference book

  3. For a starter, I can only afford:

    • either The TeXbook or TeX by Topic; and
    • either The LaTeX Companion or Guide to LaTeX. I can already navigate lshort (the "narrative tutorial") quite well, so I'm leaning towards Guide to LaTeX (the "reference manual").

  4. What do you think of my book choices? I tend to prefer something in the style of a reference manual.

Best Answer

As a member of the LaTeX3 Project, my advice would be to totally ignore LaTeX3 when looking at books on LaTeX at the moment. There are two reasons. First, none of the books I know of cover anything about the new work of the LaTeX3 Project. Secondly, and really much more importantly, the 'user level' experience of LaTeX is not likely to change substantially even if/when LaTeX3 is released. So what you can learn now about LaTeX2e should in the main remain relevant for a long time.

So which book to buy? If it's just one I'd go for The Guide to LaTeX: this is intended as a guide for new users, and balances nicely the need to cover the basics with enough additional material to get going. On the other hand, I tend to think of The LaTeX Companion as more of a reference work. It also suffers a little from the changes in packages over time: there are a number of significant new LaTeX2e packages that are not in The LaTeX Companion.

TeX by Topic and The TeXBook are very good to understand TeX, but as starters I wouldn't recommend them for new LaTeX users. You can read TeX by Topic electronically, and as it is more of a programmers reference I find that quite convenient: I tend to want to look up a single TeX primitive at a time. If you are going to buy one in print, I'd probably go for The TeXBook as it is more narrative than TeX by Topic. The TeXBook is alos not intended purely for programmers (at least in theory!), while I'd say TeX by Topic is really not a users book.

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