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I also wonder where to start, but with TeX and luaTex, and not LaTeX. Is that a distinction worth making?
by 0xdeadbeefbabe 9y ago
I also wonder where to start, but with TeX and luaTex, and not LaTeX. Is that a distinction worth making?
- leephillips 9y agoSure, if you want to use plain TeX, and not LaTeX. To get a really thorough grounding, you can read Donald Knuth's TexBook. I'm sure there are also briefer guides online.
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 9y agoI'm just wondering, and I don't really have an opinion.
- mturmon 9y agoIf you are an ordinary producer of documents (plain text, articles,tech reports, letters, mathematical documents, etc.) you should start with LaTeX, not TeX. It is uncommon to write in plain TeX and this has been so for many years. In practice, you will use mostly LaTeX constructs, and the simplest TeX ones, which the LaTeX guide would include.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- svat 9y agoIf you want to start with TeX, I highly recommend the book A Beginner's Book of TeX by Seroul and Levy. One of the developers behind LuaTeX also strongly recommends it (in the preface to the ConTeXt manual), and calls it "the book that turns every beginner into an expert". This one is more readable than the TeXbook, and builds up your intuition nicely. Learning LuaTeX is relatively easier after you understand the basic design of TeX.