[edutex] Seeking feedback on a beginner's guide to LaTex

[Hefferon, James S.]

II'm not sure it is what this group is about but there is no other traffic,k so what the heck?  :-)

I like the doc; these things are a hard balance.  I'll just make a couple of suggestions, based on the reactions my US undergrad  students have when I make them use LaTeX in the Proofs class.

1) Kids these days have no idea what an editor is.  Perhaps simply send them to an online site?

2) I might omit microtypography.  I might instead have more math--It is LaTeX's market..  My folks asked for a cheet sheet, so I gave them https://ctan.org/pkg/undergradmath.

3) In my PDF viewer, the "WYSIWYG" looks funny.  Could be the viewer.

Jim

-----------
... and if I did fall,
  I would fly.  -- Philippe Petit

________________________________________
From: edutex <edutex-bounces at tug.org> on behalf of Matt Kline <matt at bitbashing.io>
Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2018 12:42:03 AM
To: edutex at tug.org
Subject: [edutex] Seeking feedback on a beginner's guide to LaTex

Hi folks,

I'm working on a beginner's guide for LaTeX that:

1. Is short. (I got started with help from the LaTeX Wikibook and guides in
   CTAN's "Tutorial LaTeX" topic, but those are a bit too long to recommend as
   brief primers. They're _fantastic_ references, but when a coworker asks
   for an intro, throwing >150 pages their way seems counterproductive.)

2. Focuses on modern LaTeX features, such as Unicode input, OpenType support,
   and microtypography. (A beginner coming from other desktop publishing tools
   doesn't need to know - at least not right away - about input encodings,
   font metric files, and so on.)

I'm looking for some review from the LaTeX community, but unfortunately I'm
not quite sure where to turn - is this a good venue for it?
Would you recommend any others?

You can find a draft at https://assets.bitbashing.io/misc/latex-book.pdf
Any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Best,
Matt Kline