The LaTeX Graphics Companion, Second Edition (Tools and Techniques for Computer Typesetting)

• Publisher:   Addison-Wesley Professional
• Number Of Pages:   976
• Publication Date:   2007-08-12
• ISBN-10 / ASIN:   0321508920
• ISBN-13 / EAN:   9780321508928

The LaTeX typesetting system remains a popular choice for typesetting a wide variety of documents, from papers, journal articles, and presentations, to books--especially those that include technical text or demand high-quality composition. This book is the most comprehensive guide to making illustrations in LaTeX documents, and it has been completely revised and expanded to include the latest developments in LaTeX graphics. The authors describe the most widely used packages and provide hundreds of solutions to the most commonly encountered LaTeX illustration problems.

This book will show you how to

• Incorporate graphics files into a LaTeX document
• Program technical diagrams using several languages, including METAPOST, PSTricks, and XY-pic
• Use color in your LaTeX projects, including presentations
• Create special-purpose graphics, such as high-quality music scores and games diagrams
• Produce complex graphics for a variety of scientific and engineering disciplines

New to this edition:

• Updated and expanded coverage of the PSTricks and METAPOST languages
• Detailed explanations of major new packages for graphing and 3-D figures
• Comprehensive description of the xcolor package
• Making presentations with the beamer class
• The latest versions of gaming and scientific packages

There are more than 1100 fully tested examples that illustrate the text and solve graphical problems and tasks--all ready to run!

All the packages and examples featured in this book are freely downloadable from the Comprehensive TeX Archive Network (CTAN).

The LaTeX Graphics Companion, Second Edition, is more than ever an indispensable reference for anyone wishing to incorporate graphics into LaTeX. As befits the subject, the book has been typeset with LaTeX in a two-color design.

This book covers in one chapter (Chapter 2) the standard LaTex interfaces for embedding graphic objects in a LaTex document. Most, if not all, of this material is covered identically in the authors' other book "The LaTex Companion" and even in the 15-year-old LaTex 'bible', "LaTex User's Guide and Reference Manual" by Lamport. Virtually the entire remainder of the Graphics Companion is a one-by-one synopsis of various add-on packages for LaTex, and essentially all of this material can be obtained free by downloading docs for the respective packages from the internet. Further, many of the packages covered in the Graphics Companion involve the user writing raw Postscript, a curiously old-fashioned, or at least unnecessarily geeky, approach. Raw Postscript for graphics has largely been superseded by the use of software such as Matlab, Mathematica, Maple, and Mathtype that produce cut and pastable graphic output that can be inserted intact into a LaTex document with a simple includegraphics command - about all the average current LaTex user needs to know from a graphics standpoint. I'm not familiar with the publication requirements of the research world outside of engineering and math, but I can't imagine that other disciplines haven't evolved similar tools with cut and paste graphical capabilities. Huge sections of the Graphics Companion are devoted to MusixTex and various game description (chess, Sudoku, etc.) packages - choices that seem to have been made because (perhaps) there were available doc files that could be used (with permission) essentially intact. So, although apparently extensively researched and competently written, the Graphics Companion seems to be not much more than a catalog and compendium of docs, and difficult to justify at the price. Some time spent on one of the LaTex forums will lead to at least as much useful information as this book.

This book together with "The LaTex Companion" represents the state of the art of any manuals for LaTeX. The book is well written and it is comprehensible even to beginners . It shows all the major feature of the most common graphics packages. The most important thing is the all the packages are free available from [...] .
A really good guide for who is interested in producing high quality document and wants to write once and export in many formats.
It's a pity that there is no cd-rom media included.

Like The LaTeX Companion (Tools and Techniques for Computer Typesetting), "The LaTeX Graphics Companion" is loaded with valuable information from beginning to end (925 pages in total). This time, the focus of the book is on the various graphics packages that are available in LaTeX including:
*Metafont, Metapost and Metaobj;
*PSTricks (including pst-plot, pst-node, pst-tree, pst-fill, pst-3d and pst-3dplot);
*XY-pic;
*MusiXTeX (which is used for preparing music scores)
*Packages for typesetting science, technology and medicine formulae and diagrams; and
*Packages for typesetting games (influding chess, cards, etc). Each package is described thoroughly, through the use of numerous examples and I doubt there is a more detailed manual to these packages available anywhere. However, be aware that this book assumes a working knowledge of LaTeX (if you haven't already purchased it, I recommend you buy "The LaTeX Companion" as well as this book). Also, I found that I could not obtain some of the graphics packages described in this book and I found that when I started learning PSTricks, I needed to look at some online tutorials as well as this book, in order to learn the basics. Goosens et al. are not good at describing things to absolute beginners, but are good once you get beyond that.

The second edition of the LaTeX Graphics Companion, along the second edition of the LaTeX Companion, are essential resources for LaTeX users. When one first starts using LaTeX, you need one of the commercial books or free on-line books that provide an introduction and overview of LaTeX. Right after that you need the nearly comprehensive Companion books, written by the on-going developers and maintainers of LaTeX.

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