Foto dell'autore

George Grätzer

Autore di More Math into LaTeX

20 opere 270 membri 2 recensioni

Sull'Autore

Serie

Opere di George Grätzer

Etichette

Informazioni generali

Nome legale
Grätzer, George A.
Data di nascita
1936-08-02
Sesso
male
Nazionalità
Canada
Luogo di nascita
Hungary
Luogo di residenza
Manitoba, Canada
Attività lavorative
professor (University of Manitoba)
Organizzazioni
Fort Richmond Software

Utenti

Recensioni

Middle-of-the-road book, covering most LaTeX math needs
June 2001

Math Into LaTeX is a book with diffuse purpose -- a little bit of introduction for those trying to get into using LaTeX for their mathematical type-setting needs, a little bit of wide coverage on commands needed for many math articles, and plenty of pointing to other references on the Internet and in books. In many ways, it's too diffuse to be useful on a day-to-day basis; even though there's a Quick Finder, a mini-index at the front of the book, the choices don't seem appropriate for what comes up most often in my hair-pulling sessions with a recalcitrant LaTeX (such as fixing the margin at the top of the page).

The first section, titled A Short Course, is a simple 63-page guide, walking one through the creation of a LaTeX file, from a 22-line simple note, to adding individual math terms, to producing large formulas, to dealing with the inevitable error messages, even through running the LaTeX program. However, it's not really explained how to deal with the dvi file that comes out of the program -- a vague description that a video driver is used to view a dvi file is given in this short course, but the real information is to be found scattered throughout the book. This is a failing shared with =many= TeX and LaTeX books; one gets in lots of trouble for all that is =not= written down.

A quick overview of the remaining sections: in Text and Math one finds the meat of the book -- how to organize text regions, whether in paragraphs or lists; dealing with fonts; how to organize formulas and symbols; how to align equations and their different parts. I use this section as a reference almost constantly in typing up math articles. Section III, Document Structure, does a quick look at the overall skeleton of a LaTeX document, and in particular looks at AMS articles. Customization covers some of the more used customizing options, like changing spacing and counters of list items. The Long Documents section looks at three things: making bibliographies, making indexes, and pulling separate files together for one large document (like books). The last section, Math and the Web, talks about various conversions one can use to put up a version of LaTeX documents on the Internet, and how to deal with some PDF issues, but it's rather a spare section. The appendices, of course, have the standard charts for math symbols and European Accents, lists of fonts, and dealing with conversions. Check out the Bibliography - if you get a hold of some of the other LaTeX tomes, you will see that it's hard to find a better one than this one (though that doesn't mean a better one can't be written).

That said, this has turned out to be one of the most useful LaTeX books I have ever used (the absolutely most useful was a very short book printed by SIAM, and is for people who don't need help with the bare bones). I own three LaTeX books right now (this one, The Latex Companion, and The Latex Graphics Companion). Of the three, this one is the most useful in my day-to-day writing of mathematics in LaTeX. The problem with the Companion books is that they are useful for the esoteric topics they cover, which would be hard to figure out on one's own, but they really don't address nuts & bolts issues like Math Into LaTeX does. If you can only have one LaTeX book, you should get this one; if you have three LaTex books, you should still get it, for there are few other LaTeX books which make things so understandable and covers so many useful topics.
… (altro)
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Segnalato
meepbobeep | Mar 8, 2009 |
In its day, Level II BASIC for the TRS-80 was an excellent programming language. Its chief drawback was derived from the fact that it was an interpreted (slow) language, not a compiled (fast) language.

I was ready for this book when it came out in 1982. Programmers like me wondered if there were any way to speed things up. BASIC compilers for the TRS-80 were not yet on the market. Then came this book with its promise to make my BASIC programs run faster.

FAST BASIC overcame the limitations of Level II BASIC in two stages. Stage One is called CONTROLLED BASIC. It uses PEEK and POKE to gain control over Level II BASIC at key points in its operation. It provided greater efficiencies in device control, in particular. For example, CONTROLLED BASIC gave Level II BASIC users direct control over TRS-80 buses, ports, video display, keyboard, cassette tape, and other peripheral devices.

Stage Two is called FAST BASIC. It makes Level II BASIC faster by enhancing it with machine language routines. How much faster? Examples in this book show that arithmetic calculations will run 3 to 4 times faster and string sorts will run 1,000 times faster. This book shows how to write enhancements like these by means of only twenty machine language instructions. The machine instructions that must be learned are kept low because all of the routines already exist in the TRS-80's ROM. The instructions are easy to master because debugging is done in BASIC, not assembler.

Of course, if you plan to enhance your Level II BASIC programs with machine language, it is essential to know how to write programs in assembly language. To this end, Part Three of this book is devoted to the Z80 chip, its register set, and its instruction set.

This brings us to Part Four, FAST BASIC itself, which achieves its greatest gains by enhancing FOR-NEXT loops, string sorting, concatenating strings, and block searching. Part Four provides step-by-step instructions for turning a Level II BASIC program, first, into a SIMPLE BASIC program and, second, into a machine language enhanced FAST BASIC program.

To make their case, the Gratzers provide an example in Chapter 12 of how to speed up a search using FAST BASIC. In Level II BASIC, their TRS-80 took 5 hours and 20 minutes to perform a FIND that searched a 64K block of memory from beginning to end. In FAST BASIC, the same task was performed in 1 second!

Much help is found in the appendices to this book.

Appendix One tells about the most useful of the TRS-80's 800 or so ROM routines and how to call them: (1) math functions, (2) type conversions, (3) I/O routines, and (4) graphics.

Appendix Two contains the Z80 instruction set with emphasis on: (1) setting and resetting flags, (2) transferring 8-bit data, (3) transferring 16-bit data, (4) transferring blocks, (5) searching blocks, (6) performing 8-bit arithmetic, (7) performing logical operations, (8) performing 16-bit arithmetic, (9) doing bit manipulation, and (10) handling halts and interrupts.

Appendix Three provides two alternate listings of the Z80 instruction set. (1) An alphabetic listing is provided for those times when you want to do hand assembly of short assembly language programs. (2) A numeric listing is provided for those times when you want to do disassemblies by hand of small machine language programs.

Appendix Four deals with advanced features of binary arithmetic: (1) binary addition, (2) binary subtraction, (3) two's complement arithmetic, (4) overflow flag, (5) binary fractions, (6) single precision arithmetic, and (7) double precision arithmetic.

Appendix Five contains two hex tables: (1) a Hex Addition Table and (2) a Hex Conversion Table.

Appendix Six contains an alphabetic list of labels for calling all of the ROM routines that are referenced in the book.

Appendix Seven contains an annotated bibliography of books, devices, machine language resources, ROM references, algorithms, magazines, software sources, editors, assemblers, and debugging tools.

Appendix Eight contains complete listings of programs that are introduced in Part One of the book. For example, there is a very nice disassembler written in TRS-80 Level II BASIC by H. Lakser.

Assumptions: (1) the reader is familiar with Level II BASIC for the TRS-80 Microcomputer; (2) the reader owns and knows how to use the Radio Shack Editor Assembler.

My Chief Gripes: First, this book is printed on cheap paper which is turning brown and brittle with age. Second, this book has a cheap glue which binds the pages to the spine. If the book is opened flat, pages easily break loose from the spine. Shame on John Wiley & Sons, Inc., for stooping so low as this just to get a book to market quickly and cheaply.
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Segnalato
MrJack | Nov 7, 2008 |

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Statistiche

Opere
20
Utenti
270
Popolarità
#85,638
Voto
4.1
Recensioni
2
ISBN
43
Lingue
1

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