Showcase of beautiful typography done in TeX & friends

Question

If you were asked to show examples of beautifully typeset documents in TeX & friends, what would you suggest? Preferably documents available online (I'm aware I could go to a bookstore and find many such documents called 'books'). Extra bonus for documents whose LaTeX source is available.

This is not an idle question. Seeing great examples of any craft is both educational and inspiring, let alone explaining why we prefer TeX to Word or other text editors.

For instance, I like how Philipp Lehman's Font Installation Guide looks. I don't know enough LaTeX to realize how much customization was done, but the ToC looks polished.

Your nominations, please ...

Answer 1

Lately, I've begun working on duplicating a 16th century French Bible with XeTeX:

https://github.com/raphink/geneve_1564

It features image lettrine and OTF features using XeTeX, specifically the advanced features from the open-source EB Garamond font, some of which were implemented specifically for this project (thanks to Georg Duffner's great reactivity).

The project is still a work in progress (the marginpars can be improved) and only features one page so far.

Edit:

After reworking a few details, I ordered a printed copy recently, using zazzle:

Answer 2

If I can be allowed to plug my own project, my page for Bertrand Russell's Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy shows off 6 different PDFs for different page sizes, including eBook versions, produced with the same core source file. The source is available too. However, it was also one of my first LaTeX projects and I’m a bit embarassed by some of the messiness in the code.

A more recent, and cleaner project (source also available) is Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus also available in different versions from the same source.

Answer 3

I may be a little biased, but I'm quite happy with the way my thesis Circuit Quantum Electrodynamics turned out.

EDIT: I have now packaged up the source with a brief description of some of the tricks I used (tweaking your latex is a great way to procrastinate when you should be writing a thesis!)

If you find the sources useful, or further if you use my format as the basis of your own thesis, I would love to hear from you!

Answer 4

I was asked to publish complete code of bilingual dictionary typesetting in LaTex. I have added also two images of final result. Update: You can preview the result in PDF of example letters here

The work is still in progress. I will apreciate any comments and advices. I humbly admit that this is actually a community coolaborative work that helped me step by step to add usefull functions to the code. Thank you !!!

% smaller format B5 for printing in print houses
\documentclass[8pt,b5paper,twocolumn]{extbook}
% larger format A4 for easy printing
% note: B5 format uses 6cm picture width, A4 format 7.2 picture width
%\documentclass[10pt,a4paper,twocolumn]{extbook} 
\usepackage[top=2cm, headsep=0.4cm, bottom=1.5cm, left=1.5cm, right=1.5cm]{geometry}
\usepackage{fancyhdr}
\usepackage[icelandic, czech, english]{babel}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\DeclareUnicodeCharacter{00A0}{~} % finds hidden non-breakable space
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{tgpagella}
\usepackage[scaled]{helvet}
\usepackage{enumitem}
\usepackage{hanging}
\usepackage{makeidx}
\usepackage{stmaryrd}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{calc}
\usepackage{tipa}
\usepackage{fix2col}
\usepackage{dingbat}
\usepackage{manfnt}
\usepackage{latexsym}
\usepackage{graphicx}
\usepackage{color}
\usepackage{titlesec}
\usepackage{fourier-orns} %used for ornaments
\usepackage{amsmath} %used for non-breakabledash
\usepackage{hyphenat} % no hyphen in abbreviations
\usepackage[labelformat=empty]{caption}

% tables
% declention and conjugation tables
\usepackage{caption}
\usepackage{booktabs}
\captionsetup{labelformat=empty}
\usepackage{floatrow}
\DeclareFloatFont{footnotesize}{\footnotesize}% "scriptsize" is defined by floatrow, "tiny" not
\floatsetup[table]{font=footnotesize}
\setlength {\heavyrulewidth }{0.1 em}

% place frequent star
\newcommand{\freqstar}{%
\raisebox{-.2ex}{%
  \textcolor{darkgreen}{\ding{167}}%
}%
}%

% float control
\renewcommand{\topfraction}{0.9}    % max fraction of floats at top
\renewcommand{\bottomfraction}{0.8} % max fraction of floats at bottom
%   Parameters for TEXT pages (not float pages):
\setcounter{topnumber}{2}
\setcounter{bottomnumber}{1}
\setcounter{totalnumber}{2}     % 2 may work better
\setcounter{dbltopnumber}{2}    % for 2-column pages
\renewcommand{\dbltopfraction}{0.9} % fit big float above 2-col. text
\renewcommand{\textfraction}{0.07}  % allow minimal text w. figs
%   Parameters for FLOAT pages (not text pages):
\renewcommand{\floatpagefraction}{0.7}  % require fuller float pages
% N.B.: floatpagefraction MUST be less than topfraction !!
\renewcommand{\dblfloatpagefraction}{0.7}   % require fuller float pages
% remember to use [htp] or [htpb] for placement

\makeatletter
\setlength{\@fptop}{0pt}
\setlength{\@fpbot}{0pt plus 1fil}
\makeatother


% pdf information
\usepackage[pdftex,colorlinks=true]{hyperref}
\hypersetup{pdftitle={PDF title},pdfauthor={PDF author}, pdfsubject={PDF subject}, pdfkeywords={PDF keywords}, linktoc=none}

% COLORS
\definecolor{darkgreen}{rgb}{0.4, 0.01, 0.24}
\definecolor{royalazure}{rgb}{0.0, 0.22, 0.66}
\definecolor{brown}{rgb}{0.4, 0.01, 0.24}

% COLORS FOR THUMB INDEXES
\definecolor{babyblueeyes}{rgb}{0.63, 0.79, 0.95}
\definecolor{unitednationsblue}{rgb}{0.36, 0.57, 0.9}
\definecolor{blue(ryb)}{rgb}{0.01, 0.28, 1.0}
\definecolor{darkblue}{rgb}{0.0, 0.0, 0.55}
\definecolor{screamingreen}{rgb}{0.46, 1.0, 0.44}
\definecolor{limegreen}{rgb}{0.2, 0.8, 0.2}
\definecolor{islamicgreen}{rgb}{0.0, 0.56, 0.0}
\definecolor{upforestgreen}{rgb}{0.0, 0.27, 0.13}
\definecolor{icterine}{rgb}{0.99, 0.97, 0.37}
\definecolor{orange(colorwheel)}{rgb}{1.0, 0.5, 0.0}
\definecolor{orange-red}{rgb}{1.0, 0.27, 0.0}
\definecolor{oucrimsonred}{rgb}{0.6, 0.0, 0.0}
\definecolor{cottoncandy}{rgb}{1.0, 0.74, 0.85}
\definecolor{orchid}{rgb}{0.85, 0.44, 0.84}
\definecolor{vividcerise}{rgb}{0.85, 0.11, 0.51}
\definecolor{patriarch}{rgb}{0.5, 0.0, 0.5}

% Thumb indexes' colors
\newcommand\BoxColor{%
\ifcase\theletternum darkgreen!30\or babyblueeyes\or unitednationsblue\or blue(ryb)\or screamingreen\or limegreen\or islamicgreen\or upforestgreen\or icterine\or orange(colorwheel)\or orange-red%
\or oucrimsonred\or cottoncandy\or orchid\or vividcerise\or patriarch\or babyblueeyes\or unitednationsblue\or blue(ryb)\or screamingreen\or limegreen\or islamicgreen\or upforestgreen\or icterine\or orange(colorwheel)\or orange-red%
\or oucrimsonred\or cottoncandy\or orchid\or vividcerise\or patriarch\else darkgreen!30\fi}

%COMMANDS
\newcommand\entry[3][]{\hangpara{2em}{1}{\fontfamily{phv}\selectfont{\textbf{{#2}}}}\ 
#3\ifx\relax#1\relax\markboth{#2}{#2}\else\markboth{#1}{#1}\fi
\par}\nopagebreak[4]
\newcommand*{\dictchar}[1]{\parbox[c][3cm][c]{2cm}{\Huge\textbf{#1}}\par}

\newcommand*{\dictchar}[1]{
\centerline{\parbox[c][3cm][c]{2cm}{%
\fontsize{24}{24}
\selectfont
{#1}}}\par
}

\newcommand{\devision}[1]{\hspace*{-2em}{{{{\foreignlanguage{icelandic}{\color{royalazure}{\fontfamily{phv}\selectfont{\textbf{#1}}}}}}}}}

%hyperlinks in black
\makeatletter
\let\Hy@linktoc\Hy@linktoc@none
\makeatother
%FANCY PAGE STYLES
\pagestyle{fancy}

% THUMB INDEXES
% new counter to hold the current number of the letter to determine the vertical position
\newcounter{letternum}
% newcounter for the sum of all letters to get the right height of a box
\newcounter{lettersum}
\setcounter{lettersum}{33}
% some margin settings
\newlength{\thumbtopmargin}
\setlength{\thumbtopmargin}{1cm}
\newlength{\thumbbottommargin}
\setlength{\thumbbottommargin}{3cm}
% calculate the box height by dividing the page height
\newlength{\thumbheight}
\pgfmathsetlength{\thumbheight}{%
(\paperheight-\thumbtopmargin-\thumbbottommargin)%
/%
\value{lettersum}
}
% box width
\newlength{\thumbwidth}
\setlength{\thumbwidth}{0.5cm}
% style the boxes
\tikzset{
thumb/.style={
   text=white,
   minimum height=\thumbheight,
   text width=\thumbwidth,
   outer sep=0pt,
   font=\sffamily\bfseries,
}
}
\newcommand{\oddthumb}[1]{%
    % see pgfmanual.pdf for more information about this part
    \begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture, overlay]
        \node [thumb,fill=\BoxColor, text centered,anchor=north east,] at ($%
            (current page.north east)-%
            (0,\thumbtopmargin+\value{letternum}*\thumbheight)%
        $) {#1};
   \end{tikzpicture}
 }
 \newcommand{\eventhumb}[1]{%
    % see pgfmanual.pdf for more information about this part
    \begin{tikzpicture}[remember picture, overlay]
        \node [thumb,fill=\BoxColor, text centered,anchor=north west,] at ($%
            (current page.north west)-%
            (0,\thumbtopmargin+\value{letternum}*\thumbheight)%
        $) {#1};
   \end{tikzpicture}
 }
 % create a new command to set a new lettergroup with thumb indexes
 \newcommand{\lettergroup}[1]{%
 \fancyhead[LO]{\fontfamily{phv}\selectfont{\textbf{\rightmark}}\eventhumb{#1}}%
 \fancyhead[RE]{\fontfamily{phv}\selectfont{\textbf{\leftmark}}\oddthumb{#1}}%
 % step the counter of the letters
 \stepcounter{letternum}%
 }

 % BASIC PAGE STYLE
 \fancypagestyle{basicstyle}{%
 \fancyhf{}
 \renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{0.4pt}
 \renewcommand{\footrulewidth}{0pt}
 \fancyhead[LE,RO]{\textbf{\chaptitle}}
 \fancyhead[LO,RE]{\textbf{\thepage}}}

 % INDEX PAGE STYLE  
 \fancypagestyle{indexstyle}{%
 \fancyhf{}% Clear header/footer
 \renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{0.4pt}% 0.4pt header rule
 \renewcommand{\footrulewidth}{0pt}% No footer rule
 \fancyhead[C]{\thepage}% Page in footer, centred
 }

 % DICTIONARY PAGE STYLE
 \fancypagestyle{dictstyle}{%
 \renewcommand{\headrulewidth}{0.4pt}
 \fancyhf{}
 \fancyhead[LE,LO]{{\fontfamily{phv}\selectfont{\textbf{\rightmark}}}}
 \fancyhead[CO,CE]{\thepage}
 \fancyhead[RE,RO]{{\fontfamily{phv}\selectfont{\textbf{\leftmark}}}}}

 \setlength{\columnsep}{20pt}
 \setlength{\columnseprule}{0.1pt}

 \titleformat{\chapter}[block]
 {\normalfont\huge\bfseries}{\thechapter.}{1em}{\Huge}
 \titlespacing*{\chapter}{20pt}{20pt}{20pt}

 % GRAPHICS PATH
 \graphicspath{/home/SomeUser/Documents/dictionary/images/}

 % TITLE, AUTHORS, THANKS
 \title{\textbf{Name of Dictionary}
 \thanks{Words of thanks}}
 \author{Authors}
 \date{Date}

 % LOCALIZATION
 \addto{\captionsczech}{%
 \renewcommand{\indexname}{{Seznam autorů fotografií}} % renames the index name
 }
 \addto\captionsczech{% renames the contents name
 \renewcommand{\contentsname}%
 {Obsah}%
 }

 \newcommand{\HRule}{\rule{\linewidth}{0.1mm}} % rule line

 \newcommand*{\chaptitle}{}
 \renewcommand*{\chaptermark}[1]{%
 \renewcommand*{\chaptitle}{#1}}
 % index of authors of photographs
 \makeindex

\begin{document}
\twocolumn
\pagestyle{dictstyle}

% the letters in alphabetical order
\input{letters/dict_letter_a.tex}
\input{letters/dict_letter_aa.tex}
% list of all letters, each letter in separate .tex file, example of letter file, see bellow.

% print the index of authors of photographs
\clearpage
\pagestyle{empty}
\printindex
\end{document}

Here comes an pseudo example file for letter l - dict_letter_l.tex

\lettergroup{l}
\dictchar{l L}
\entry[headword_without_special_symbols]{headword_with_symbols}{senses}
\entry[2 headword_without_special_symbols]{2 headword_with_symbols}{2 senses}
% picture belongs to headword2
\begin{figure}[h]
\centering
\setlength\fboxsep{0pt}\setlength\fboxrule{0.5pt}\fbox{\includegraphics[width=7.2cm]{Name_of_the_file.jpg}}
\caption{The Caption of the Picture}
\end{figure} 
\index{Headword - Author of Photograph, Licence}}
% Clear page to start new letter on a new page, else not.
\clearpage

Updated:

Here comes an original example of letter N - dict_letter_n.tex. Note: Using \foreignlanguage{icelandic} for Icelandic and \foreignlanguage{czech} for Czech is achieved corrent line break.

% thumb index N
\lettergroup{n}
% shows N n 
\dictchar{N n}
% first headword
\entry[naðra]{{naðra} }{{\textipa{[{n}{a}{ð}{r}{a}]}}{\color{darkgreen}{\small{\textbf{  f}}}}{\color{darkgreen}{\footnotesize{ (nöðru, nöðrur)}}} {\textbf{1.}}\foreignlanguage{czech}{{\footnotesize{ zool.}}} {\foreignlanguage{icelandic}{(\textit{$\rightarrow$ slanga})}}\foreignlanguage{czech}{{ had, zmije}}; {\textbf{2.}}{\footnotesize{ přen.}}\foreignlanguage{czech}{{ had, zmije (o~falešném člověku)}}.}
% second headword
\entry[naðurtunga]{{naður$\cdot$$\cdot$tung|a} }{{\textipa{[{n}{a}{ð}{\textscy}{\textsubring{r}}{t\textsuperscript{h}}{u}{\ng}{\r{g}}{a}]}}{\color{darkgreen}{\small{\textbf{  f}}}}{\color{darkgreen}{\footnotesize{ (\hbox{-}u, \hbox{-}ur)}}}\foreignlanguage{czech}{{\footnotesize{ bot.}}}\foreignlanguage{czech}{{ hadí jazyk azorský}}{ (l.~{\foreignlanguage{latin}{Ophioglossum azoricum}})}.}
% third headword with picture
\entry[nagdýr]{{nag$\cdot$$\cdot$dýr} }{{\textipa{[{n}{a}{\textbabygamma}{\textsubring{d}}{i}{\textsubring{r}}]}}{\color{darkgreen}{\small{\textbf{  n}}}}{\color{darkgreen}{\footnotesize{ \nobreakseq{(\hbox{-}s, \hbox{-})}}}}\foreignlanguage{czech}{{\footnotesize{ zool.}}}\foreignlanguage{czech}{{ hlodavec}}{ (l.~{\foreignlanguage{latin}{Rodentia}})}.}
\begin{figure}[h]
\centering
\setlength\fboxsep{0pt}\setlength\fboxrule{0.5pt}\fbox{\includegraphics[width=7.2cm]{83259.jpg}}
\caption{Nagdýr}
\end{figure} 
\index{Nagdýr - Šárka Troníčková, COPYRIGHT/CC-BY-NC}
% forth headword
\entry[nagg]{{nagg} }{{\textipa{[{n}{a}{\r{g}}{\textlengthmark}]}}{\color{darkgreen}{\small{\textbf{  n}}}}{\color{darkgreen}{\footnotesize{ \nobreakseq{(\hbox{-}s)}}}} {\foreignlanguage{icelandic}{(\textit{$\rightarrow$ rifrildi})}}\foreignlanguage{czech}{{ hašteření, hádka}}.}

Only for Czech users: Run vlna -l -m -n dict_letter_n.tex to add non-breakable space between small prepositions.

It's necessary to run pdflatex dictionary.tex twice to display correctly thumb indexes. Then it's needed to run texindy -L icelandic -M lang/icelandic/utf8 dictionary.idx (this command orders the indexed words according to Icelandic alphabet. Then run pdflatex dictionary.tex to make index appear.

The example of current layout in B5 format, 8pt fontsize, using font Helvetica for headwords and font tgpagella for definitions.

Updated: The example of current layout in A4 format.

The main change is the alingment of the pictures. Pictures are aligned directly to the headword or at the top of the page.

See How to set a letter to the margin of the page and position it vertically according to alphabetical order? for some explanations about the thumb index.

See How to display unprinted text in headers? for explanations about unprinted headwords in header.

See also question Two different layouts using fancyhdr that exlains how to use different layouts using fancyhdr

Answer 5

• The TeX Showcase contains many examples.
• The AAUP SHOWBOOKS site shows Humanities books typeset with TeX
• tufte-latex contains two classes and examples dedicated to the Tufte style

Answer 6

My lecture notes on Flight Dynamics, in Italian.

This is Lecture Note 1.

Answer 7

I use LaTeX to typeset my roleplaying game (RPG) projects. Since I received some "Is this really LaTeX?" comments, I'd thought I might share them here, as they go beyond the usual scientific background. The text however is German only. Maybe notable are:

• Kurai Jikan, an Anime/Manga/japanese themed 24-page booklet
• Einhundertelf Jahre, a toys themed 20-page booklet
• ROBiN, a Robin Hood / medieval themed 80-page book (work in progress, take a look at the "eBook" version)

The first two use a common style with replaced images like backgrounds. For this style, (Xe)LaTeX source (Autorenpaket, author's package for creating own RPG scenarios) using neutral blue images is available.

Answer 8

If you have time to spare, you can also have a look at my thesis Stochastic Multiplayer Games: Theory and Algorithms. The font is Fedra Serif B, combined with FdSymbol.

Edit: My LaTeX class file is available at https://gist.github.com/3428745.

Answer 9

A recent edition to the pstricks family is a set of "Vectorian ornaments" used for decorating text. It At the moment (don't know whether it might be expanded) it includes 89 ornaments:

The documentation showcases some of the styles around text.

Answer 10

The thesis of Eivind Uggedal is very nice: Social Navigation on the Social Web: Unobtrusive Prototyping of Activity Streams in Established Spaces

The source is at http://bitbucket.org/uggedal/thesis/src/

Answer 11

The coloredlettrine package aims to provide beautiful colored drop caps to LaTeX, using the EB Garamond font:

Answer 12

My first attempt to make something ... beautiful?

Without trying to imitate any particular book or style, I tried to evoke the beauty of ancient publications (very far from the illuminated books of he Middle Ages with Gothic or Uncial fonts, which are difficult to read for modern people).

The idea was add only add some fourier-orns ornaments, color, lettrines and old style numbers (except in math mode) once so popular. The type font is Palatino, that looks old but not strange for people (who mostly will be not aware that is not the usual Times Roman). There are not ligatures nor random small missplacing of old printing presses, but protrusion and expansion of the microtype package help in recreate slight imperfections preventing printing characters always with exactly the same size. Paper is artificially aged with wallpaper package with a simple backgroud.

The two sample pages below (with nonsense dummy text, biologist please ignore the content) have been joined by the inner margins with Gimp, to simulate their appearance in a paper book.

Answer 13

I also think Uggedal's thesis looks very nice.

I am also quite pleased with how LaTeX and Friends turned out. The following are some comments about the design.

I tried to implement a proper grid layout, with the text on the verso page backing up the text on the recto. This turned out to be a real challenge. For some reason the grid package didn't work, so I had to do it myself. It's almost perfect, but sometimes it just didn't work. I didn't want to spend too much time on it, so I decided to compromise and manually adjust when necessary. I want to reimplement this properly when I know enough about the LaTeX3 packages.

As explained in the colophon of the book, I had two main concerns when I designed the page layout.

• I wanted figures and tables that could run into the margins. With program listings this is almost always needed; also this would let me typeset input and output side by side.
• I wanted the figure and table captions to the side. That way, long explanations would not be so disruptive.

The following is an example (the pagenumbers aren't correct).

The following shows why letting figures run into the margins is useful every now and then.

The itemize and enumerate environments have their bullets and numbers in the margin, which works well.

The description labels were also set in the margin, but sometimes I adjusted the labels by hand:

• When the labels started with the same words, I moved those words into the margin. See for example chapter 8 (Mathematics): defining the current style, and defining the next environment.
• When the labels ended with the same words, I moved that part of the label into the text (see e.g. page 117: demonstration tables and reference tables).

It gives some extra emphasis to the labels. The following is an example of two facing pages with labels in the margins.

The back pages of the part titlepages feature pictures of paintings by Billy Foley (I have two of his paintings). They look stunning. The following are two examples. The first is one of his older pictures. The second a more recent one.

Initially, I had another design, which was based on a picture with fish by Escher. Unfortunately, the Escher Eoundation wouldn't give me permission to do so. The design also featured a nice joke with the title page, which had the picture on it. the picture was drawn with TikZ. When you got to the next page, you could see the exact same page, but with the control points of the spline elements.

I also had a little ornament that had the fish lined up in a horizontal direction. The ornament was used to mark the end of the chapters. In ASCII art, it would look like this (each * is a fish and the fish interlock in horizontal and vertical direction, with a little space between them):

 * *
* * *

You may find metapost source for the fish on my metapost pages. It's the source of the first fish pictures on the Escher page.

Finally, here's an example of the bibliography.

Answer 14

I got a directory "Beautiful TeX document" on my computer storing files that are beautiful and I might want to look at for inspiration when designing mine.

1. ArsClassica
2. ClassicThesis
3. the manual of pdfx
4. TKZdoc-linknodes-us

All of them can be found in CTAN. fontinstallationguide and tufte-sample-book have already been mentioned.

LaTeX companion 2nd edition has chapter-3 free on-line (http://www.latex-project.org/guides/tlc2-ch3.pdf). I think the typography is one of the finest.

Answer 15

I scarcely cannot believe, that Chrisoph Schiller’s herculean 20 years effort of writing a free physics textbook Motion Mountain is not on this list. Despite his criticsm of LaTeX, which itself is interesting to read, the six volumes are produced with LaTeX. Beautifully typeset in MinionPro and Myriad extended by Johannes Küster’s Minion Math.

If I had to choose one project of which I wanted to see the LaTeX source of, it would be this book.

Answer 16

OK, so here is one "from the Friends". I am a great admirer of typographic skill of Hans Hagen and Metafun manual is one of my favourites. Also available is Metafun manual source.

Answer 17

I really like the documentation of Philipp Lehman. The Font Installation Guide was mentioned in the question, but I also think for a simpler article (rather than the book style) his package documentation is hard to beat aesthetically, e.g. biblatex's

In biblatex manual [was: Can I make a document that looks like this?], the author explains how to recreate this style (fonts and such).

Answer 18

Personally, I love the ability to really use typography as part of storytelling, like as shown in the \raisebox example in A (Not So) Short Introduction to LaTeX2e:

\raisebox{0pt}[0pt][0pt]{\Large%
\textbf{Aaaa\raisebox{-0.3ex}{aa}%
\raisebox{-0.7ex}{a}%
\raisebox{-1.2ex}{r}%
\raisebox{-2.2ex}{g}%
\raisebox{-4.5ex}{h}}}
she shouted, but not even the next
one in line noticed that something
terrible had happened to her.

Or to show that pi is rather long... (based on diminuendo from from the Tex showcase):

Isn't that art?

Answer 19

One of the most interesting books typeset with TeX that I know, is "Trees, Maps, and Theorems" by Jean-Luc Doumont. It offers beautiful typography down to details such that each paragraph is typeset as a perfect rectangle (which means a lot of textual rewriting, so whether this is a good idea I leave open). But it makes a wonderful coffee-table book, with a lot of very useful advice inside.

Link to some sample pages as pdf

Answer 20

Christoph Bier's typokurz is beautiful and useful; it's a 15-page guide to (German) (micro)typography in a nutshell. While it's just an article lengthwise (scrartcl, to be precise), it masterly modifies many features frequently discussed on Tex.SX: section-titles, tables, footnotes, marginnotes, header ...

What's even better is that the preamble is available as well, it even is extensively annotated, but – that's the downside – in German, just like the entire document is. Nonetheless, non-German speakers might still find their way around as well as some inspiration in the source code.

Note: The preamble linked to is not from the author's own website, and may therefore differ somewhat from the original.

Answer 21

Here is a page from a simultaneous Romanian/English liturgy used in the Romanian Orthodox church that I typeset. I don't know if it qualifies for beautiful, but I'll let you decide. I used an archaich Romanian font for the headings, parcolumns for the side-by-side text, and LilyPond for the scores.

Answer 22

I try to pay attention to typography (and in particular French typography) details in the books I edit. Hopefully, the result is not too bad (I don't pretend to a typographist nor a graphist):

• Calvinisme, Arminianisme & Parole de Dieu (published last year):

• Charismatique ou charismaniaque ? (unpublished yet)

• Sagesse pour Aujourd'hui (unpublished yet)

Lately, I've tried hard to bring acceptable typography to EPUB publishing, using the same LaTeX source (and some TeX4HT tricks). Here are some examples taken on Android with Aldiko:

And in Readium (Chrome extension):

Answer 23

While writing it, I really liked my bachelor thesis Implementation of a Read Mapping Tool Based on the Pigeon-hole Principle, even though the margins (and some other things) were all wrong.

Looking back, I probably wouldn’t use such a heavy font again (Hoefler Text). But I still like the chapter headings a lot:

Answer 24

I wonder why nobody suggested the original works of Donald Knuth. To me they are beautiful examples of typesetting. As far as I know, his books and papers are typeset using TeX (vs. LaTeX), but for the sake of the topic, I guess, it doesn't matter.

Some examples:

• The Art of Computer Programming (TAOCP)
• The TeXbook
• The METAFONTbook

The complete list of Knuth's publications as well as preliminary drafts of the TAOCP Vol 4a chapters (in post script files) can be found on his home page. The sources of the TaOCP book (tex files) are also available in peer-to-peer networks.

Answer 25

Admittedly, you asked for LaTeX, not TeX, but the TeXbook is quite nice. Its source is freely available (but you are not allowed to compile it).

Answer 26

Perhaps a little off the track of beautiful document typography per se, but I often turn to the TikZ and PGF examples pages when I'm seeking inspiration or solutions re snazzy and relatively easy to produce vector graphics typography.

Answer 27

A Brief Introduction to Neural Networks is a beautiful one.

Answer 28

I know two nice repositories (the last one has already been listed here):

1. Dario Taraborelli shows some of the elegant and beautiful features of LaTeX.
2. There is the TeX Showcase, edited by Gerben Wierda, which contains examples of what you can do with LaTeX. Most, if not all, of these examples are of exceptionally high quality.

Answer 29

The articles from the online journal 'Semantics & Pragmatics' seem to come out very well.

Answer 30

If I may be so bold to also plug my own project, here are some documents created with my TeX macro package "DocScape" (Warning: sometimes large downloads!)

budget plan of german federal state

Lighting Product Catalogue

Tools Product Catalogue

Touristic Catalogue

Camping Guide (sorry, no direct download link)

Games Catalogue

Newsletter

While these may not all be highest quality by the typographic standards usually applied to TeX documents (after all, all of them are generated from data bases), they might be stretching a bit the imagination what one would consider to be the typical TeX document :-)