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Let's see if we could use MO to put some pressure on certain publishers...

Although it is wonderful that it has been put online, I think it would make an even greater read if "Hodge Cycles, Motives and Shimura Varieties" by Deligne, Milne, Ogus and Shih would be (re)written in the latex typesetting (well, if I could understand its content..).

But enough about my opinion, what do you think? Which book(s) would you like to see "texified"? As customary in a CW question, one book per answer please.

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6 
 I'm not a big fan of this question. What is it supposed to mean? Your favorite older math books? I can't imagine how it would be useful to anyone. – Andy Putman May 13 2011 at 19:33
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 @Max : I am pretty dubious that a MO post will have any effect on a publisher. – Andy Putman May 13 2011 at 19:48
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 My impression is that things are much more complicated than this. For example the LMS just reprinted Cassels-Froehlich and they had to try to get official permission from all the people who wrote all the articles first, and then some of them were dead etc etc. I think it all took a long time. Someone mentions EGA/SGA below but Grothendieck will not give his permission to reprint and actually explicitly asked people who were TeXifying bits of SGA to stop. I am almost certain that MO has epsilon role to play here. You need to talk direct to publishers and authors. – Kevin Buzzard May 13 2011 at 20:46
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 I'm on the negative side for keeping this question, since it's too fuzzy and open-ended. Who owns published material is often a complicated issue. (I was actually contacted recently by a European Springer editor about who was next-of-kin to one of my deceased older brothers, who had edited his deceased thesis advisor's last book, which a former publisher had issued but which Springer wanted to reprint.) – Jim Humphreys May 13 2011 at 22:09
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 Why go to the publishers? Why not round up five to ten people, agree on a common latex style, type the book up yourselves then put the source and result on a website somewhere? It may demand a lot of work and be illegal as hell, but copyright laws in science are morally wrong anyway. – Gunnar Magnusson May 14 2011 at 16:36
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closed as off topic by Andrew Stacey, Andres Caicedo, Andy Putman, Ryan Budney, Qiaochu Yuan May 16 2011 at 9:10

17 Answers

29

EGA, with hyperlinks for easy navigation.

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1 
 Hyperlinks are indeed very useful; it would be even better if it was easy way to go back to the page you were just reading. – André Henriques May 13 2011 at 16:56
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 @André Most modern PDF-viewers come with a "back in the document" button that does what you are asking for; e.g., acrobat reader, okular, skim etc. – Peter Krautzberger May 13 2011 at 17:09
@Peter Really? Where? I've never seen it in acrobat (and would be happy to be poited to it) – Peter McNamara May 14 2011 at 1:24
@Peter McNamara: I think Adobe Reader does not show back/forward buttons as default and I don't use it myself. Try editing the toolbar and look for back/forward buttons. Also, try alt+right, alt+left (on windows) or whatever combination your browser uses to navigate. And if all fails, google. – Peter Krautzberger May 14 2011 at 21:03
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 @Peter McNamara: Reader is not really ideal. I have been using Foxit for some time and it is much faster, has back/forward buttons, lets you make bookmarks, etc. – Qiaochu Yuan May 16 2011 at 9:12
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Milnor - Lectures on the h-cobordism theorem

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22 
 Everything by Milnor. – mephisto May 13 2011 at 18:47
I agree with you. – hce May 13 2011 at 18:55
9 
 Me too. Especially Morse Theory. – drbobmeister May 14 2011 at 2:23
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Atiyah - K-Theory

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I agree. Improve the index as well. – Joe Johnson May 14 2011 at 1:45
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All the SGA's. Note that SGA 1 and 2 already exists in TeX, and there is something for SGA 3 and 4.

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10

Rolfsen - Knots and Links

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9

Atiyah + Macdonald, Introduction to Commutative Algebra.

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2 
 The AW typesetting if this book is pretty good already, isn't it? – lhf May 13 2011 at 19:33
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 You haven't seen a paperback version of this. The printing, at least, is awful. – Simon Rose May 13 2011 at 20:24
@Simon, you're right, I haven't seen a paperback version. – lhf May 14 2011 at 1:38
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Marcus - Number Fields

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That's my favorite candidate for real typesetting for two reasons: the book is great and the typewritten text is awful to look at. And it was so at the time the book came out. – lhf May 14 2011 at 1:43
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Chern - Complex manifolds without potential theory

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4

"Lectures on Chevalley Groups" - by Robert Steinberg

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A thorough search on the web will lead you to a TeXed/PDFed version of this. – Denis Chaperon de Lauzières May 14 2011 at 17:42
Can you give a link? I can't find it. – Najdorf May 14 2011 at 21:35
@Emmanuel Kowalski: I would appreciate that as well, I've been looking forever by now. – Petrus May 16 2011 at 8:10
Strangely I can't locate it any more either... The title page of the file claims the TeXing was done by C. Drupieski, but it does not seem to be on his home page... However there is the following PDF scan of the original(A. Ram says he got permission from Steinberg to make it available): math.wisc.edu/%7Eram/YaleNotes.pdf – Denis Chaperon de Lauzières May 16 2011 at 21:46
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Leon Simon - Lectures on Geometric Measure Theory

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3

Palais - Foundations of global non–linear analysis

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3

Adams - Lectures on Lie Groups

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2

Paul Cohen - Set Theory and the Continuum Hypothesis.

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2

Robin Hartshorne's lecture notes on projective geometry. This appeared as a book and is now out of print. The pages appear to be photographs of pages produced with a typewriter, plus hand-drawn illustrations.

Maybe a wiki should be set up where volunteers can transcribe from the book. Permission from copyright owners might be easy to get if they're not interested in continuing to publish it themselves, and if they are, an attempt to get permission for such a wiki might pressure them to put it back in print with better typesetting.

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2

"Rational Homotopy Theory and Differential Forms." by Griffiths and Morgan.

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2

Stong - Notes on cobordism theory

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0

Michael Reed. Abstract Non Linear Wave Equations.

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