[tldoc] LaTeX vs. TeX programming or I got it all wrong

[Karl Berry]

Greetings,

    get the "LaTeX companion" for free on the internet; if the answer is no, 

No.

    then isn't there something like "TeX by topic - A TeXician's reference" 
    but for LaTeX?

Some LaTeX documentation is freely available, but I'm not sure there's
anything as comprehensive as Victor's book.  Anyway, see
http://tug.org/interest.html#doc for the links I know about.  If you
find others, please write webmaster at tug.org.

    the thing would be to get rid of the slash and leave only LaTeX or
    only TeX.  

I'm not sure what you mean.

    Which is the difference as to programming macros? Does
    LaTeX provides some facilities for programming in it that TeX
    doesn't?

In one way no, it's based on the same core primitives.

But in practice yes, it's a completely different system with thousands
of additional macros for programming and typesetting.

BTW, this list is intended for discussion of the TeX Live
documentation.  You might have better luck on a more general list.

Regards,
karl