General ⇒ man latexcommand?!

[karlisrepsons]

People,
what is currently the best way to look up the manual of LaTeX command x? For example, I want to understand why \hspace*{4cm} doesn't give me the same output as \hspace{4cm}, but do I really need to mess with google or bother this forum? Maybe someone has found/created a standard way to do a lookup similar to $ man linuxcommand?

[josephwright]

There are online documentation sources, but one of the problems in LaTeX is that the set of commands is flexible, which makes it hard to be "comprehensive". You really do have to start with something like the Guide To LaTeX if you want good coverage of all of the kernel commands.

[karlisrepsons]

...so, read it from the personal humanstorage. What is the previously mentioned "Guide To LaTeX"? Does such a list of texts exist, which provide exhaustive knowledge about the basic commands and ideas, so that one just has to study the additional packages? Or it rather transforms somewhere into studying code and the knowledge scatters into web?

[josephwright]

The Guide to LaTeX is a book published by Addision-Wesley. It's probably the best overview of the LaTeX kernel's functions, etc.