The LaTeX Companion

What Hacker News says

1. sombragrisMar 2026
   Congrats to all the TeXLive team on a new release.

   If you're stuck on something LaTeX related, remember there's the latest edition to The LaTex Companion. It even has an appendix explaining the (in)famously cryptic LaTeX/TeX error messages:

   https://latex-project.org/help/books/

   There's also, among other resources, the great LaTeX Font Catalogue: https://tug.org/FontCatalogue/

   Enjoy the new release!

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2. sombragrisSep 2023
   As a 20+ years as a more or less casual LaTeX user, I feel your pain. However, some points your mention have workarounds.

   My first advice would be to invest in getting The LaTeX Companion (https://www.amazon.com/LaTeX-Companion-Techniques-Computer-T...). Really, it is the "common things people want or need to do documents" as you said.

   The third edition is just out of the presses. I have the 2nd one, and one of the appendixes is an explanation of LaTeX and TeX infamously cryptic error messages, and it is really useful.

   As for using PDF features, try PDFLaTeX or even better, XeLaTeX or luatex. The latter use utf-8 and advanced PDF kerning techniques, among other useful stuff.

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3. enasterosophesJun 2022
   Douglas Hofstadter's work provides several examples.

   * Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (GEB)

   * Metamagical Themas

   * I Am A Strange Loop (IAASL)

   GEB and IAASL are thematically similar, and both are worth a read if you're interested in both Gödel's theorems (plus related work eg Church-Turing) and Hofstadter's philosophy of mind. GEB is a lot more creative and fun; IAASL does a better job of communicating the key technical ideas like incompleteness.

   Metamagical Themas is a collection of shorter work, generally technical and fun.

   Although Hofstadter was the first to come to my mind, these other authors/works also provide fun and/or excellent examples of technical writing:

   * Neal Stephenson's "In the Beginning was the Command Line"

   * Velleman's "How To Prove It" and "Philosophies of Mathematics"

   * Mittelbach & Goosens "The LaTeX Companion"

   * Waldrop's "The Dream Machine"

   * Nielsen & Chuang's "Quantum Computation & Quantum Information"

   * Lakatos's "Proof & Refutations"

   * Chambers "What is this thing called science?"

   * Doxiadis & Papadimitriou's "Logicomix".

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4. orjanMar 2012
   "The LaTeX Companion" proved very useful when I wrote my thesis. [http://www.amazon.com/LaTeX-Companion-Techniques-Computer-Ty...]
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5. hsmyersFeb 2011
   Secret to understanding/using LaTeX is to have at hand two books: Guide to LaTeX by Kopka and Daly, and The LaTeX Companion by Mittelbach and Goossens. That plus a project to publish (similar to have a task you want to program) should be enough to get you going. The real problem with LaTeX seems to be retention over time without continued use--- if you don't use it more or less all the time, you tend to forget a lot of the basics...
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6. mawekiSep 2025
   Who doesn't own the third edition of the LaTeX Companion book?
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