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I have been a LaTeX user for about two decades now, with a basic knowledge of the internal mechanisms and quirks of TeX. If at the beginning of my learning curve things didn’t appear too complicated, now I feel overwhelmed by the TeX world, especially when trying to bridge TeX with the “outside” world and with the new technologies: modern fonts and encodings, “modern” PDFs and document formats that go beyond the usual “paper” document, combining TeX with modern scripting languages, drawing and beyond, interactions with the web, e-books, online collaboration, … and this is just that comes through my mind right now.

I know that there many users on tex.stackexchange.com that have a wide view over the current TeX world and a more comprehensive understanding about what goes “under the hood”, so that is why I would like ask you for a “survival guide through the modern jungle of TeX”: how would you guide someone lost?

If you were to make a guide for the modern TeX world, what would you include in there, what would be the steps that someone like me would have to take in order to get a clearer understanding of the picture, to navigate and explore in all directions and not get lost along the way?

I know that what I'm asking is not too precise, but feel free to contribute anything that you believe is most relevant, from your own perspective and experience.

digital-Ink
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    This feels like a superset of the recent LaTeX Companion, 3rd ed (~1984 pages): not sure its really answerable as a question on the site! – Joseph Wright Jul 26 '23 at 12:50
  • FYI, this post gives some more details about the 3rd edition, though not all links seem to be available any more: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/612573/the-latex-companion-3rd-edition – MS-SPO Jul 26 '23 at 13:41
  • One thing you should keep in mind is that anything that is PDF specific uses a \special command to interact directly with the PDF driver. The complications are from tryinhg to write PDF microcode. – John Kormylo Jul 26 '23 at 15:34
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    A superbrief survival quide: (1) LaTeX2e still exists, with little changes. You can still use it (2) Forget now the eps, ps and dvi fomats. Just use jpg, png or pdf images to make a pdf document with pdflatex (3) Now you can also use TTF or OTF fonts with xelatex or lualatex (4) with lualatex you can also use lua code (5) LaTeX3 is wonderful but not for human beings, just left it work in the background of new packages and you will be happier (6) Now you can make literate programming on LaTeX including R, phyton, etc., but this has little/nothing to do with LaTeX. – Fran Jul 26 '23 at 17:13
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    There is no only LaTeX in the jungle. – wipet Jul 26 '23 at 17:17
  • @wipet I know, there is much more, but the comments have a character limit. :( – Fran Jul 26 '23 at 17:40
  • @Fran You can use TTF fonts with pdfTeX, too. You just can't use them out-of-the-box. (I mean you can use them without converting them. Obviously, if you can convert fonts, you can use more.) – cfr Jul 27 '23 at 00:18
  • L3 is far more for some of us human beings than L2 or TeX. – cfr Jul 27 '23 at 00:32
  • @cfr I mean average humans, those that will worried only for the solution out-of-the-box. :) Following with the statistical terms, I doubt if L2 users are within the interquartile range, but L3 users are clearly outliers. Not a demerit, of course, just the opposite. (more smiles). – Fran Jul 27 '23 at 02:52
  • @Fran I didn't realise you intended the claim purely descriptively. L3 is easier than L2, so if somebody is looking at the world now and doesn't want something available out-of-the-box, they may be unlikely to use L3. That's a shame because they'd likely have an easier and more successful time of it. – cfr Jul 27 '23 at 04:03

1 Answers1

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This is a partial answer to your question, as it only sees to the internal workings of (plain) LuaTeX. Other answers may give an overview of the current state of LaTeX.

Manuals

There is no single manual for modern TeX. Instead, you will have to consult the following in chronological order:

Every manual on this list expands on (and assumes you know) the previous one. For a concise diachronous overview of control sequences, you might like this document[pdf] by Petr Olšák.

Outdated parts

In the above (and here on SE) you should ignore anything that talks about:

  • The dvi format or PostScript (ps and eps): use PDF instead.
  • Fonts in the tfm format: use TrueType (ttf) or OpenType (otf) fonts instead.
  • Text encodings: just use unicode (utf-8) and a modern font.

Vector graphics

The popular tikz can make use of all modern PDF features. Consider using pgfplots for plots and diagrams. To these, LuaTeX adds the option of using MetaPost directly. For doing so, you have the choice between luamplib and minim-mp. Their feature sets are not identical, so the choice will have to depend on the specifics of your use-case. The latter can also be used as a stand-alone MetaPost compiler.

Mathematical typesetting

This part is especially fragmented. Plain TeX has at least three counterparts to LaTeX’s unicode-math:

  • The luatex-plain format that comes with the ConTeXt distribution contains quick-and-dirty support for unicode mathematics (in the file luatex-math.tex) that might be good enough for your needs.
  • The OpTeX extended plain format includes a more comprehensive approach baked-in (but then you will have to use the rest of OpTeX, too); it comes with a summary of mathematical typesetting[pdf] that is worth reading even if you will never use OpTeX.
  • Otherwise, the minim-math package provides comprehensive and format-agnostic mathematics support.

PDF features

renkema
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    In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I am the author of several packages mentiones above (minim-*). – renkema Jul 27 '23 at 10:55