Review of : for the Beginner

The spectrum of books about TEX has been broadened by another beginner's book about plain l&X: with Introduction to (Norbert Schwarz; Addison-Wesley, 1990), A Beginner's Book of TJ$ (Etaymond Seroul and Silvio Levy; Addison-Wesley, 1991) and by Example (Arvind Borde; Academic Press, 1992) there is now for the Beginner by Wynter Snow. In contrast to the Seroul and Levy book, which is somewhat academic in style, this book has a very chatty style that is both its strong and its weak point. The author has a lively style of writing and uses rather unorthodox metaphors for W ' s behaviour (did you know that macros come in meatand-potatoes and jelly-doughnut varieties?), which in general are quite illuminating. For instance, the fact that lines are spaced at \baselineskip distance is described "as if TEX has a ruler exactly \baselineskip long that it uses to decide where the next shelf should go", which is a good way of putting it. Sometimes, however, too much American cultural background is needed. For instance, I think I understand what is meant by "back in grade school" (page go), but I'm not sure what is meant by "a taffy-like substance" (page 97). Considering how international the community is, this point is not without significance.