Writing scientific documents using LaTeX
Today it has been announced that a new paper “Writing scientific documents using LaTeX” by Andrew J. Bennieston has been uploaded to CTAN, an introduction on 13 pages. I took a brief glimpse at this paper.
Nice to have another introduction, but some odd things catched my eye. The author introduces $$…$$ as shortcut form for display math mode without equation numbering, but […] is recommended instead of this, like mentioned in “Obsolete packages and commands“, $$…$$ should be avoided. The author describes also the obsolete math environment eqnarray. Though he is mentioning that the align environment should be preferred he didn’t say why. As one can see in the output of the equations (2), (3) and (4) there’s something wrong with the spacing next to the relation symbol, the author just didn’t use eqnarray correctly, there’s a & separation symbol missing on each line. It’s compilable, but if you extend the right side then the = symbols will not be aligned any more, compare the syntax with this reference. The right sides of those equations including the = symbol are actually centered, not noticeable because they are having equal width.
This article contains also a wrong syntax of the align environment. The demonstration example doesn’t contain any & separation symbol, the alignment is just a coincidence.
I’m referring to the fourth Edition of September 13, 2008, uploaded to CTAN today. I’m expecting that the mistakes will be corrected soon, of course I will send the author an email containing my comments.
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