Re: Which book for programmer wanna be LaTeX package writer...

Dan Sommers <me@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>On 29 Jan 2006 23:32:45 -0800, campbell.gene@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
>> Although, I have many years of development experience, I have very
>> little (almost zero) formal experience with Tex or LaTex.

there are no books for the writer of packages. the books that exist
have patchy relevance to writers; there's a summary in

http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=writecls

but every time i think about the matter, i come up with a different
list.

>> Given all this, I'm leaning toward either "Guide to LaTeX" (4th ed) or
>> "The LaTeX Companion" (2nd ed), or both.
>[...]
>
>> Can anyone recommend one or the other based on my needs described? ...
>
>I end up using both as references.

but, mostly, they teach you latex, not writing latex packages: which
is why the books mentioned in the faq answer are about tex itself.
given that (as you say, snipped somewhere) you want to go outside what
latex already does, knowledge of how latex does things (at the user
interface level) seems a little irrelevant.

imo, the truly important thing for the package writer is knowledge of
latex internals; and to understand that you need to know tex
primitives. (fortunately, they're rather well documented ... mostly
-- the worst comment coverage is to be found in the output routine
code, which is perhaps the trickiest of the lot.)
--
Robin Fairbairns, Cambridge
.

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