This might derail my original plan (“Small Gods”) for the 2025 A-Z Blog Challenge, but I think it’ll be worth it.
For me, at least.
Recently I’ve been reading a couple of books about LaTeX, my publishing tool of choice.
- LaTeX Cookbook, by Stefan Kottwitz
- LaTeX Graphics with TikZ, by Stefan Kottwitz
- Unlocking LaTeX Graphics, by Tamara Kolda
I’ve worked with LaTeX quite some time, and I’ve cobbled together a fairly workable solution with it. ‘Cobbled together’ is an important expression here (I should refactor it). The LaTeX Cookbook showed me some things I can do better.
Which leads to the second book, LaTeX Graphics with TikZ. I’ve been using TikZ/PGF for graphical elements in my books for more than a decade. I never really understood all of it. I have a Frankenstein collection of snippets I persuaded to go in the same direction.
Mostly.
LaTeX Graphics with TikZ is much more approachable than the formal documentation. This book actually explains a lot of what I was doing and why. And how I can make things simpler for myself.
Including something of a holy grail for me, automating conversion of the prerequisite diagrams to TikZ markup.
Unlocking LaTeX Graphics looks like it can be a more practical, hands-on guide for me. I only received it over the weekend, but a quick look tells me it doesn’t explain as much. It does, however, look like a good reference to quickly remind me how to do something I already understand. The other books look like they’re better for me to learn from. This looks like it can be more useful to me at my desk.
In the meantime, they give me tantalizing glimpses of how to solve a problem I’ve seen for about eight years. This demands my attention.