On Sat, 2 Jun 2007, Steve Litt apparently wrote:
> In preparation for writing my math book (and creating the appropriate
> paragraph and character styles), I'm reading the math chapter of "TeX for the
> Impatient". Once again I marvel at how much easier it is to understand TeX
> than LaTeX, and how TeX knowledge is a great stepping stone to LaTeX.
You must not have finished the chapter yet. ;-)
(E.g., equation numbering and alignment.)
More seriously, almost all of the constructs this chapter
*are* part of LaTeX. Compare for example the discussion of
math in Lamport's book or in lshort.pdf.
The key differences (from this chapter) in are LaTeX's
practice of explicitly beginning and ending environment,
which is often helpful.
And you can use
$$ f(x) = x^{2} $$
in LaTeX if you want,
even if
\[ f(x) = x^{2} \]
or
\begin{equation*}
f(x) = x^{2}
\end{equation*}
are more idiomatic.
(The last assumes the amsmath package is loaded.)
There are reasons to advocate plain TeX, but I do not think
this chapter illustrates them.
Cheers,
Alan Isaac
