From: ravn@imada.ou.dk (Thorbjoern Ravn Andersen)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: LaTeX or TeX documentation available by ftp? [Summary] [FAQ entry?]
Summary: Summary of survey for LaTeX or TeX book sources
Keywords: book ftp
Date: 20 Jul 92 12:57:44 GMT
Organization: Dept. of Math. & Computer Science, Odense University, Denmark

Recently I asked the newsgroup for information regarding the
availability of LaTeX or TeX documents describing the aforementioned
systems.  Especially I was interested in the books themselves.

This is the summary:

Both the LaTeX and the TeX books are copyrighted and not allowed to
reproduce in any media, including The Net.  Knuth has, however, made the
TeX-book and METAFONT-book available with the TeX distribution (at least
for Unix) in the TeX3.14/TeXdoc and the TeX3.14/MFdoc directories, under
the following terms:

% The file is distributed only for people to see its examples of TeX input,
% not for use in the preparation of books like The METAFONTbook.
% Permission for any other use of this file must be obtained in writing
% from the copyright holder and also from the publisher (Addison-Wesley).

... and ...

   You will note that the source to The TeXBook is available in this
   directory as texman.tex.  This material is copyrighted (C), 1983, by
   the American Mathematical Society, and is intended to be used only to
   help you test your TeX port, and to provide examples of how to use
   TeX.  In particular, YOU MAY NOT REPRODUCE THE TeX MANUAL IN ANY WAY.


There are, however, other documentation available:

--------------------
Ralf Valerien wrote:

 A useful server for your purpose could be
     mail-server@rus.uni-stuttgart.de (via Email) (*)
     anonymous ftp 129.69.1.12

where you can find something possibly interesting in the directories
     info/tex
slightly more in
     soft/tex/education
and most in
     soft/tex/documentation (**)


Marc Van.rey added:
  Latex: Using Latex with emTeX. Leslie Lamport, Eberhard Mattes.


Derek Bradley said:

  I have seen TeX Made Easy on the net somewhere.  Maybe ask the people at 
  129.69.1.12, that`s a major archive.

--------------------


(*)  Use the mail-server, the ftp-connection is *VERY* slow.
(**) In soft/tex/documentation are (amongst others) the following:

gentle-introduction.tex:  
  A ~100 page introduction to Plain TeX with exercises by Michael Doob

latex-essential/
  README          \    A very good introduction to LaTeX with a
  essential.tex    == discussion of the "small.tex" file.  I found
  hndout.sty      /   this one very useful.  By Jon Warbrick.


------------------

I ended up by converting Essential LaTeX to a chapter in the local
guide.  The result is available by anonymous ftp from

  "verdi.imada.ou.dk"

as
  /pub/docs/localguide.tar.Z -- The source (except styles) for the Guide
  /pub/docs/localguide.ps.Z  -- The resulting PostScript file.

I would recommend using the PostScript version, as the source is rather
depending on quite a few style-options.  A word of warning is
appropriate -- the whole thing runs at ~120 pages.


------------------

The following people mailed useful information:

  Ronald Kappert <ronaldk@sci.kun.nl>
  vanrey@hippo.fido.de (Marc Van.rey)
  db@little_ben (Derek Bradley)
  Joerg-Martin Schwarz <UPH508@DDOHRZ11.BITNET>
  Ralf Valerien <UNM40F@DBNRHRZ1.earn>

-- 
Thorbj{\o}rn Andersen |  
ravn@imada.ou.dk      |  b="a=\"b=\"++show b++';':b";a="b="++show b++';':b