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<head>
<title>UK TeX FAQ -- question label tutorials</title>
</head><body>
<h3>(La)TeX Tutorials, etc.</h3>
<p>Some very fine tutorials have been written, over the years. Michael
Doob's splendid 'Gentle Introduction' to Plain TeX (available on
CTAN) has been stable for a very long time. Another contender
in the same game is from one D. R. Wilkins, available on the web at
<a href="http://www.ntg.nl/doc/wilkins/pllong.pdf">http://www.ntg.nl/doc/wilkins/pllong.pdf</a>
<p>Tobias Oetiker's '(Not so) Short Introduction to LaTeX2e', is
regularly updated, as people suggest better ways of explaining things,
etc. The introduction is available on CTAN, together with
versions in the some of the many languages it has been translated
into.
<p>Harvey Greenberg's 'Simplified Introduction to LaTeX' was written
for a lecture course, and is also available on CTAN (in PostScript
only, unfortunately).
<p>Edith Hodgen's
<a href="http://www.mcs.vuw.ac.nz/~david/latex/notes.pdf">LaTeX, a Braindump</a>
starts you from the ground up - giving a basic tutorial in the use
of <i>Linux</i> to get you going (rather a large file...).
Its parent site, David Friggens'
<a href="http://www.mcs.vuw.ac.nz/~david/latex/">documentation page</a> is a
useful collection of links in itself.
<p>Peter Flynn's "Beginner's LaTeX" (which also started as course
material) is a pleasing read. A complete copy may be found on
CTAN, but it may also be browsed over the web
(<a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/info/beginlatex/html/">http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/info/beginlatex/html/</a>).
<p>TUG India is developing a series of online LaTeX tutorials
which can be strongly recommended: select single chapters at a time
from <a href="http://www.tug.org.in/tutorials.html">http://www.tug.org.in/tutorials.html</a> - the
set comprises two parts, "Text" and "Graphics", so far.
<p><a href="http://www.comp.leeds.ac.uk/andyr/misc/latex/index.html">Andy Roberts' introductory material</a>
is a pleasing short introduction to the use of (La)TeX; some of the
slides for <em>actual</em> tutorials are to be found on the page, as well.
<p>Another item, not quite FAQ, not quite tutorial, is Herbert
Voss's excellent
<a href="http://texnik.de/">LaTeX tips and tricks</a>.
<p>An interesting (and practical) tutorial about what <em>not</em> to do is
<i>l2tabu</i>, or "A list of sins of LaTeX2e users" by Mark
Trettin, translated into English by Jürgen Fenn. The
tutorial is available from CTAN as a PDF file (though
the source is also available).
<p>The AMS publishes a "Short Math Guide for LaTeX", which is
available (in several formats) via
<a href="http://www.ams.org/tex/short-math-guide.html">http://www.ams.org/tex/short-math-guide.html</a>
<p>Herbert Voss is developing a parallel document, that is also very
useful; it's part of his "tips and tricks" mentioned above and is
also available on CTAN.
<p>Keith Reckdahl's "Using Imported Graphics in LaTeX2e" is an
excellent introduction to graphics use, though it's slightly dated in
not discussing anything other than the <i>dvips</i> route.
Available on CTAN, but again without sources.
<p>An invaluable step-by-step setup guide for establishing a "work
flow" through your (La)TeX system, so that output appears at the
correct size and position on standard-sized paper, and that the print
quality is satisfactory, is Mike Shell's <i>testflow</i>. The
tutorial consists of a large plain text document, and there is a
supporting LaTeX file together with correct output, both in PostScript and
PDF, for each of A4 and "letter" paper sizes. The
complete kit is available on CTAN (distributed with the
author's macros for papers submitted for IEEE publications).
<p>
For Plain TeX commands a rather nice
<a href="http://www.nmt.edu/tcc/help/pubs/texcrib.pdf">quick reference booklet</a>,
by John W. Shipman, is available.
<p>Special-purpose tutorials are always useful, and an example is set by
Haruhiko Okumura's page on
<a href="http://oku.edu.mie-u.ac.jp/~okumura/texfaq/japanese/">typesetting Japanese with Omega</a>
(the parent page is in Japanese, so out of the scope of this
FAQ).
<p>Some university departments make their local documentation available
on the web. Most straightforwardly, there's the simple translation of
existing documentation into HTML, for example the INFO
documentation of the (La)TeX installation, of which a sample is the
LaTeX documentation available at
<a href="http://www.tac.dk/cgi-bin/info2www?(latex)">http://www.tac.dk/cgi-bin/info2www?(latex)</a>
<p>More ambitiously, some university departments have enthusiastic
documenters who
make public record of their (La)TeX support. For example, Tim Love
(of Cambridge University Engineering Department) maintains his
deparment's pages at
<a href="http://www-h.eng.cam.ac.uk/help/tpl/textprocessing/">http://www-h.eng.cam.ac.uk/help/tpl/textprocessing/</a>, and Mimi
Burbank (of the School of Computer Science & Information Technology
at the University of Florida) manages her department's at
<a href="http://www.csit.fsu.edu/~mimi/tex/">http://www.csit.fsu.edu/~mimi/tex/</a> - both sets are fine
examples of good practice.
<p>
<p>People have long argued for (La)TeX books to be made available on
the web, and
Victor Eijkhout's excellent "TeX by Topic" (previously published
by Addison-Wesley, but long out of print) was offered in this way at
Christmas 2001. The book is currently
available at <a href="http://www.eijkhout.net/tbt/">http://www.eijkhout.net/tbt/</a>;
it's not a beginner's tutorial but it's a fine reference
(contributions are invited, and the book is well
worth the suggested contribution).
<p>Addison-Wesley have also released the copyright of "TeX for the
Impatient" by Paul W. Abrahams, Karl Berry and Kathryn A. Hargreaves,
another book whose unavailability many have lamented. The authors
have re-released the book under the GNU general documentation
licence, and it is available from CTAN.
<p>Norm Walsh's "Making TeX Work" is also available (free) on the
Web, at <a href="http://makingtexwork.sourceforge.net/mtw/">http://makingtexwork.sourceforge.net/mtw/</a>; the sources
of the Web page are on CTAN.
<p>The book was an excellent resource in its day, but is now somewhat
dated; nevertheless, it still has its uses, and is a welcome addition
to the list of on-line resources. A project to update it is believed
to be under way.
<p>Jim Hefferon maintains a web page
"<a href="http://www.ctan.org/installationadvice/">Managing a one-person TeX system</a>"
which provides a useful introduction to those who find they need to
manage a TeX system on a personal machine. It covers much of the
matters discussed in answers such as
"<a href="FAQ-wherefiles.html">Where to put new files</a>",
and thereby covers the gap left by the (possibly temporary) lack of
"<em>Making TeX work</em>".
<p>There's also (at least one) typographic style tutorial available on
the Web, the excellent
"<a href="http://www.nbcs.rutgers.edu/~hedrick/typography/typography.janson-syntax.107514.pdf">Guidelines for Typography in NBCS</a>".
In fact, its
<a href="http://www.nbcs.rutgers.edu/~hedrick/typography/index.html">parent page</a>
is also worth a read: among other things, it provides copies of the
"guidelines" document in a wide variety of primary fonts, for
comparison purposes. The author is careful to explain that he has no
ambition to supplant such excellent books as
<a href="FAQ-typebooks.html">Bringhurst's</a>, but the document (though it does
contain its Rutgers-local matter) is a fine introduction to the issues
of producing readable documents.
<dl>
<dt><tt><i>Beginner's LaTeX</i></tt><dd><a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/beginlatex/beginlatex-3.6.pdf">info/beginlatex/beginlatex-3.6.pdf</a>
<dt><tt><i>Gentle Introduction</i></tt><dd><a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/gentle/gentle.pdf">info/gentle/gentle.pdf</a>
<dt><tt><i>l2tabu</i></tt><dd><a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/l2tabu/english/l2tabuen.pdf">info/l2tabu/english/l2tabuen.pdf</a>; source also available: <a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/l2tabu/english/l2tabuen.tex">info/l2tabu/english/l2tabuen.tex</a>
<dt><tt><i>Graphics in LaTeX2e</i></tt><dd><a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/epslatex.pdf">info/epslatex.pdf</a>; the
document is also available in PostScript format as <a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/epslatex.ps">info/epslatex.ps</a>
<dt><tt><i>Making TeX Work</i></tt><dd><a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/makingtexwork/mtw-1.0.1-html.tar.gz">info/makingtexwork/mtw-1.0.1-html.tar.gz</a>
<dt><tt><i>Not so Short Introduction</i></tt><dd><a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/lshort/english/lshort.pdf">info/lshort/english/lshort.pdf</a>
(in English, or browse for sources and other language versions at
<a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/info/lshort/">info/lshort/</a>)
<dt><tt><i>Simplified LaTeX</i></tt><dd><a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/simplified-latex/simplified-intro.ps">info/simplified-latex/simplified-intro.ps</a>
<dt><tt><i>TeX for the Impatient</i></tt><dd><a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/impatient.zip">info/impatient</a> (<a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/impatient.tar.gz">gzipped tar</a>, <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/info/impatient/">browse</a>)
<dt><tt><i>testflow</i></tt><dd><a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/IEEEtran/testflow/">macros/latex/contrib/IEEEtran/testflow/</a>
<dt><tt><i>Herbert Voss' Maths tutorial</i></tt><dd><a href="ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/info/math/voss/Voss-Mathmode.pdf">info/math/voss/Voss-Mathmode.pdf</a>
</dl>
<p><p>This question on the Web: <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=tutorials">http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=tutorials</a>
</body>
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