Where are all the TeX tutorials?
Rui Maciel
tutorials on TeX on the web. If someone googles for "TeX tutorials", close
to 100% of all results are related to latex and none of them are related to
pure tex.
Is there a reason for this? The use of the LaTeX template package may be
widespread and may be the prefered way to produce documents. Yet, it only
seems logical that at least a considerable fraction of the available
tutorials would touch the basics of the entire typesetting system that
LaTeX depends on.
So, what are your thoughts on this?
Best regards
Rui Maciel
--
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jabber:rui_m...@jabber.org
Ralf Stubner
> TeX is very respected and is incredibly usefull. Yet, there is almost zero
> tutorials on TeX on the web. If someone googles for "TeX tutorials", close
> to 100% of all results are related to latex and none of them are related to
> pure tex.
What's 'pure TeX'? TeX the program? Or TeX the program with the plain
format loaded? Or what?
Anyway, instead of using Goggle for this, I would look into the FAQ:
<URL:http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=tutorials>
cheerio
ralf
AES
Rui Maciel <rui.m...@gmail.com> wrote:
> TeX is very respected and is incredibly usefull. Yet, there is almost zero
> tutorials on TeX on the web. If someone googles for "TeX tutorials", close
> to 100% of all results are related to latex and none of them are related to
> pure tex.
Google on "TeXbook" (which is Knuth's own fundamental, total, complete
intro to his creation "pure" TeX).
I believe sources for the TeXbook can be downloaded from some of the
citations you'll be pointed to, but given the size of the book, you'll
probably want to buy a hard copy from amazon or ???.
It provides essentially all you'll need for your purpose, but once you
have it, you can continue looking on amazon for numerous other texts on
TeX that are available, if you want them.
William F. Adams
Eijkhout's wonderful _TeX by Topic_, and _TeX for the Impatient_ was
made available recently and there's _A Gentle Introduciton to TeX_ by
Michael Doob all of which are listed at:
http://members.aol.com/willadams/books-e-tex.html
William
Jay Belanger
AES <sie...@stanford.edu> writes:
> In article <434aedd0$0$32107$a729...@news.telepac.pt>,
> Rui Maciel <rui.m...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> TeX is very respected and is incredibly usefull. Yet, there is almost zero
>> tutorials on TeX on the web. If someone googles for "TeX tutorials", close
>> to 100% of all results are related to latex and none of them are related to
>> pure tex.
>
> Google on "TeXbook" (which is Knuth's own fundamental, total, complete
> intro to his creation "pure" TeX).
>
> I believe sources for the TeXbook can be downloaded from some of the
> citations you'll be pointed to, but given the size of the book, you'll
> probably want to buy a hard copy from amazon or ???.
The sources from the TeX book (as I recall) are only available to
allow people to see how it was produced. You aren't allowed to
actually TeX it up, and reading the source as a tutorial probably
isn't the best approach.
Jay
David Kastrup
> In article <434aedd0$0$32107$a729...@news.telepac.pt>,
> Rui Maciel <rui.m...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> TeX is very respected and is incredibly usefull. Yet, there is
>> almost zero tutorials on TeX on the web.
Well, the reason is the same that you will find wagonloads of
do-it-yourself books that tell you to do a variety of things by using
a preassembled power drill, whereas there is a dearth of books about
how to create, design and assemble a power drill. The required skill
set is not interesting to the general public.
>> If someone googles for "TeX tutorials", close to 100% of all
>> results are related to latex and none of them are related to pure
>> tex.
>
> Google on "TeXbook" (which is Knuth's own fundamental, total,
> complete intro to his creation "pure" TeX).
That's not useful. The sources are explicitly not allowed to be
printed.
Instead Google for "TeX by Topic".
--
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum
UKTUG FAQ: <URL:http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html>
Robin Fairbairns
>TeX is very respected and is incredibly usefull. Yet, there is almost zero
>tutorials on TeX on the web. If someone googles for "TeX tutorials", close
>to 100% of all results are related to latex and none of them are related to
>pure tex.
very few people use pure tex. it's such a bore to have to set the
catcodes of most everything at the start of each run. even the most
hair-shirted among us tend to use plain tex (the non-* commands in the
texbook all come from plain tex, as opposed to the * ones which are
primitive parts of pure tex).
>Is there a reason for this? The use of the LaTeX template package may be
>widespread and may be the prefered way to produce documents. Yet, it only
>seems logical that at least a considerable fraction of the available
>tutorials would touch the basics of the entire typesetting system that
>LaTeX depends on.
there's only on freely available tutorial on tex primitives -- tex by
topic. that used to be a book, but people seem to have stopped buying
it :-( (more fool "people" -- it's an excellent book.)
>So, what are your thoughts on this?
(a) you don't know your terminology, and you probably meant plain tex.
(b) you didn't look terribly hard.
(c) perhaps you're just a troll. never mind: other people will have
learned from the sensible posts in this thread.
try http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=tutorials
note that the usage "(La)TeX" is supposed to mean plain tex or latex
interchangeably. note that there are tutorials on plain tex usage,
while there really remains only tbt for serious internals use.
--
Robin (http://www.tex.ac.uk/faq) Fairbairns, Cambridge
Robert Marshall
> TeX is very respected and is incredibly usefull. Yet, there is
> almost zero tutorials on TeX on the web. If someone googles for "TeX
> tutorials", close to 100% of all results are related to latex and
> none of them are related to pure tex.
Apart from the other suggestions try something like
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=%22tex+tutorials%22+-latex&btnG=Google+Search&meta=
The - specifier can be helpful for weeding out the noise!
Robert
--
La grenouille songe..dans son chāteau d'eau