By paul W. Abrahams, Kathryn A Hargeaves, and Karl Berry
Donald Knuth’s TEX, a computerized typesetting system, provides nearly everything needed for high-quality typesetting of mathematical notations as well as of ordinary text. It is particularly notable for its flexibility, its superb hyphenation, and its ability to choose aesthetically satisfying line breaks. Because of its extraordinary capabilities, TEX has become the leading typesetting system for mathematics, science, and engineering and has been adopted as a standard by the American Mathematical Society. A companion program, METAFONT, can construct arbitrary letterforms including, in particular, any symbols that might be needed in mathematics. Both TEX and METAFONT are widely available within the scientific
and engineering community and have been implemented on a variety of computers. TEX isn’t perfect—it lacks integrated support for graphics, and some effects such as revision bars are very difficult to produce—but these drawbacks are far outweighed by its advantages.
TEX for the Impatient is intended to serve scientists, mathematicians, and technical typists for whom TEX is a useful tool rather than a primary interest, as well as computer people who have a strong interest in TEX for its own sake. We also intend it to serve both newcomers to TEX and those who are already familiar with TEX. We assume that our readers are comfortable working with computers and that they want to get the information they need as quickly as possible. Our aim is to provide that information clearly, concisely, and accessibly.
This book therefore provides a bright searchlight, a stout walking-stick, and detailed maps for exploring and using TEX. It will enable you to master TEX at a rapid pace through inquiry and experiment, but it will not lead you by the hand through the entire TEX system. Our approach is to provide you with a handbook for TEX that makes it easy for you to retrieve whatever information you need. We explain both the full repertoire of TEX commands and the concepts that underlie them. You won’t have to waste your time plowing through material that you neither need nor want.
In the early sections we also provide you with enough orientation so that you can get started if you haven’t used TEX before. We assume that you have access to a TEX implementation and that you know how to use a text editor, but we don’t assume much else about your background. Because this book is organized for ready reference, you’ll continue to find it useful as you become more familiar with TEX. If you prefer to start with a carefully guided tour, we recommend that you first read Knuth’s The TEXbook (see page 18 for a citation), passing over the “dangerous bend” sections, and then return to this book for additional information and for reference as you start to use TEX. (The dangerous bend sections of The TEXbook cover advanced topics.) The structure of TEX is really quite simple: a TEX input document consists of ordinary text interspersed with commands that give TEX further instructions on how to typeset your document. Things like math formulas contain many such commands, while expository text contains relatively few of them.
The time-consuming part of learning TEX is learning the commands and the concepts underlying their descriptions. Thus we’ve devoted most of the book to defining and explaining the commands and the concepts. We’ve also provided examples showing TEX typeset output and the corresponding input, hints on solving common problems, information about error messages, and so forth. We’ve supplied extensive cross-references by page number and a complete index. We’ve arranged the descriptions of the commands so that you can look them up either by function or alphabetically. The functional arrangement is what you need when you know what you want to do but you don’t know what command might do it for you. The alphabetical arrangement is what you need when you know the name of a command but you don’t
know exactly what it does.
Donald Knuth’s TEX, a computerized typesetting system, provides nearly everything needed for high-quality typesetting of mathematical notations as well as of ordinary text. It is particularly notable for its flexibility, its superb hyphenation, and its ability to choose aesthetically satisfying line breaks. Because of its extraordinary capabilities, TEX has become the leading typesetting system for mathematics, science, and engineering and has been adopted as a standard by the American Mathematical Society. A companion program, METAFONT, can construct arbitrary letterforms including, in particular, any symbols that might be needed in mathematics. Both TEX and METAFONT are widely available within the scientific
and engineering community and have been implemented on a variety of computers. TEX isn’t perfect—it lacks integrated support for graphics, and some effects such as revision bars are very difficult to produce—but these drawbacks are far outweighed by its advantages.
TEX for the Impatient is intended to serve scientists, mathematicians, and technical typists for whom TEX is a useful tool rather than a primary interest, as well as computer people who have a strong interest in TEX for its own sake. We also intend it to serve both newcomers to TEX and those who are already familiar with TEX. We assume that our readers are comfortable working with computers and that they want to get the information they need as quickly as possible. Our aim is to provide that information clearly, concisely, and accessibly.
This book therefore provides a bright searchlight, a stout walking-stick, and detailed maps for exploring and using TEX. It will enable you to master TEX at a rapid pace through inquiry and experiment, but it will not lead you by the hand through the entire TEX system. Our approach is to provide you with a handbook for TEX that makes it easy for you to retrieve whatever information you need. We explain both the full repertoire of TEX commands and the concepts that underlie them. You won’t have to waste your time plowing through material that you neither need nor want.
In the early sections we also provide you with enough orientation so that you can get started if you haven’t used TEX before. We assume that you have access to a TEX implementation and that you know how to use a text editor, but we don’t assume much else about your background. Because this book is organized for ready reference, you’ll continue to find it useful as you become more familiar with TEX. If you prefer to start with a carefully guided tour, we recommend that you first read Knuth’s The TEXbook (see page 18 for a citation), passing over the “dangerous bend” sections, and then return to this book for additional information and for reference as you start to use TEX. (The dangerous bend sections of The TEXbook cover advanced topics.) The structure of TEX is really quite simple: a TEX input document consists of ordinary text interspersed with commands that give TEX further instructions on how to typeset your document. Things like math formulas contain many such commands, while expository text contains relatively few of them.
The time-consuming part of learning TEX is learning the commands and the concepts underlying their descriptions. Thus we’ve devoted most of the book to defining and explaining the commands and the concepts. We’ve also provided examples showing TEX typeset output and the corresponding input, hints on solving common problems, information about error messages, and so forth. We’ve supplied extensive cross-references by page number and a complete index. We’ve arranged the descriptions of the commands so that you can look them up either by function or alphabetically. The functional arrangement is what you need when you know what you want to do but you don’t know what command might do it for you. The alphabetical arrangement is what you need when you know the name of a command but you don’t
know exactly what it does.
We must caution you that we haven’t tried to provide a complete definition of TEX. For that you’ll need The TEXbook, which is the original source of information on TEX. The TEXbook also contains a lot of information about the fine points of using TEX, particularly on the subject of composing math formulas. We recommend it highly.
