Source code of books made with TeX/LaTeX to learn [closed] - open-source

Question

Closed. This question does not meet Stack Overflow guidelines. It is not currently accepting answers.
We don’t allow questions seeking recommendations for books, tools, software libraries, and more. You can edit the question so it can be answered with facts and citations.
Closed 7 years ago.
Improve this question
Some time ago, reading this entry I found a nice image and a pointer to a better book entitled "Thinking Forth". To my surprise, the LaTeX sources of the book were ready to download, with pearls like:
%% There's no bold typewriter in Computer Modern.
%% Emulate with printing several times, slightly moving
\newdimen\poormove
\poormove0.0666pt
\newcommand{\poorbf}[1]{%
\llap{\hbox to \poormove{#1\hss}}%
\raise\poormove\rlap{#1\hss}%
\lower\poormove\rlap{#1\hss}%
\rlap{\hbox to \poormove{\hss}\hbox{#1}}%
#1}
%\let\poorbf=\textbf
\renewcommand{\poorbf}[1]{{\fontencoding{OT1}\fontfamily{cmtt}\fontseries{b}\selectfont#1}}
in which it can simulate the bold stroking of a font that doesn't have it. Since reading that, I was unaware of \llap and such, but now I can use them to define boxes, etc.
So, my question is twofold:
Do you know of sites that show that relatively advanced use of TeX/LaTeX in terms of useful recipes, and
Do you know any books that offer their TeX/LaTeX source to inspect and learn (and that are worth doing so.)?

Answer 1

There are two comprehensive reference guides/recipe books for TeX:
TeX by Topic by Victor Eijkhout
TeX for the Impatient by Paul Abrahams, Kathryn Hargreaves, and Karl Berry
In both cases, the sources are also available.
As lindelof mentions, the TeXBook is also available, albeit in a form that prevents compilation (Knuth wished people to look at the source for inspiration but not to reproduce the book freely):
The TeXBook by Donald Knuth
On the LaTeX side of things, resources a little more scarce from the programming point of view. The best free reference that I know of is
Formatting Information by Peter Flynn
Of course there's also
The Not So Short Guide to LaTeX by Tobias Oetiker
but that doesn't cover so much programming "stuff". The LaTeX sources themselves contain some useful nuggets, but the quality of the documentation ranges from excellent to non-existent in parts; this should be available in your distribution with texdoc source2e.
Other large LaTeX packages obviously have the source to their documentation available; a notable example is the memoir class:
The memoir class by Peter Wilson (memman.tex is the documentation)
I'm sure there are many more books with their source available; these are just the first ones that come to mind that happen to also be able TeX and/or LaTeX.

Answer 2

Believe it or not, but the source code to the TeXbook is actually freely downloadable:
TeXbook source code package

Answer 3

Not that I'd recommend it (unless you've got a lot of time and caffeine to spare), but I learned a lot from just reading the latex.ltx file. I learned a lot not only about LaTeX but also of course about TeX. It's a heavy read though and I'd suggest reading a book about TeX first before diving into the latex.ltx file.
I wanted to know about how "optional" parameters actually worked and reading the latex.ltx file really helped me understand.

Answer 4

Another book that would definitely fit part 2 of your question is LaTeX for Complete Novices by TeX.SX member Nicola Talbot.
This later question, posted on TeX.SX, is also relevant for part 2 and worth reading.

Answer 5

I found this book by Allen B. Downey that looks really nice: Computational Modeling and Complexity Science.