It is indeed a lucky author who is given the opportunity to completely rewrite a book barely a year after its publication. Writing about software affords such opportunities (especially if the original edition sold out), since the author is shooting at a moving target.
LATEX and AMS-LATEX improved dramatically with the release of the new standard LATEX (called LATEX2") in June of 1994 and the revision of AMS-LATEX (version 1.2) in February of 1995. The change in AMS-LATEX is profound. LATEX2" made it possible for AMS-LATEX to join the LATEX world. One of the main points of the present book is to make this clear. This book introduces LATEX as a tool for mathematical typesetting, and treats AMS-LATEX as a set of enhancements to the standard LATEX, to be used in conjunction with hundreds of other LATEX2" enhancements.
I am not a TEX expert. Learning the mysteries of the system has given me great respect for those who crafted it: Donald Knuth, Leslie Lamport, Michael Spivak, and others did the original work; David Carlisle, Michael J. Downes, David M. Jones, Frank Mittelbach, Rainer Sch¨opf, and many others built on the work of these pioneers to create the new LATEX and AMS-LATEX.
TEX, LATEX, and AMS-LATEX
TEX is a typesetting language created by Donald E. Knuth; it has extensive capabilities to typeset math. LATEX is an extension of TEX designed by Leslie Lamport; its major features include
- a strong focus on document structure and the logical markup of text;
- automatic numbering and cross-referencing.
AMS-LATEX distills the decades-long experience of the American Mathematical Society (AMS) in publishing mathematical journals and books; it adds to LATEX a host of features related to mathematical typesetting, especially the typesetting of multiline formulas and the production of finely-tuned printed output. Articles written in LATEX (and AMS-LATEX) are accepted for publication by an increasing number of journals, including all the journals of the AMS.
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