6 ms·

This is a good article! A couple of corrections to the early history in the introductory paragraphs: • It is indeed true that the first edition of Volumes 1–3

by svat 7y ago

This is a good article! A couple of corrections to the early history in the introductory paragraphs: • It is indeed true that the first edition of Volumes 1–3 of The Art of Computer Programming and the second edition of Volume 1 (1968, 1969, 1973, 1973) had been done with hot-metal typesetting (pieces of lead, laid out to form the page) with a human doing the typesetting/compositing (with a Monotype machine). And that for the second edition of Volume 2 in 1977, the publisher Addison-Wesley was switching to a cheaper alternative. But the cheaper alternative was not electronic; it was phototypesetting (the letterforms made with light and lenses instead of metal). It was Knuth who noticed a book that had been electronically typeset (Patrick Winston's AI book), realized that electronic typesetting machines actually had enough resolution to print like “real books” (unlike typewriters or printers of the time), and decided to solve his problem for himself (as he felt that he could make shapes with 0s and 1s). • The summer of 1977, Knuth spent in China, thinking he'd specified his program in enough detail and his two students would be able to complete the program by the time he came back. He came back and saw they had only implemented a small subset, and decided to spend his sabbatical year writing the program himself. He mentions that as he started writing it he realized the students' proto-TeX was an impressive effort, because there was a lot missing from his specifications. Knuth's article The Errors of TeX (reprinted in his collection Literate Programming) goes into excellent detail on the development process. Also: a suggestion to try plain TeX (instead of LaTeX), if you haven't tried it. The book A Beginner's Book of TeX by Seroul and Levy is especially good. It might surprise you.

kashyapc 7y ago
Thank you for the background and recommendations. Just read the very interesting abstract[1] of the book by Seroul and Levy; queued. (Wish it were a tad less pricey than €64). [1] https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9780387975627 https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9780387975627
- cpach 7y ago
  If you buy a used copy it will probably be much cheaper. See e.g. https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?bi=0&bx=off&cm_sp=SearchF-_-Advtab1-_-Results&ds=30&recentlyadded=all&sortby=17&sts=t&tn=A%20Beginner%92s%20Book%20of%20TEX https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?bi=0&bx=off&c...
  - kashyapc 7y ago
    Ah, thank you. That's much better.
acqq 7y ago
> It was Knuth who noticed a book that had been electronically typeset (Patrick Winston's AI book), realized that electronic typesetting machines actually had enough resolution to print like “real books” Searching for what the actual resolutions were, I saw in your older comment (1) that you mention "Alphatype CRS" and "more than 5000 DPI." If you mention 1977, and there were already 5000+ DPI machines then, I'd really like to read a little more about that: it's impressively more than what the "laser printers" used by mortals were able to have. How did these high resolution machines work? How did they achieve the resolution physically, and how did they manage to process so much bits at the time when the RAM of microcomputers was counted in kilobytes? 1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17917367 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17917367 P.S. Digging deeper: I've just found the reason we see today the text produced with TeX as "too thin": https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/48369/are-the-original-cm-fonts-better-than-the-current-type1-fonts/361722#361722 https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/48369/are-the-origin... and linked there: https://tug.org/TUGboat/tb37-3/tb117ruckert.pdf https://tug.org/TUGboat/tb37-3/tb117ruckert.pdf
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- cpach 7y ago
  Wow. That SE post on Computer Modern is really interesting. There are so many details and nuances regarding typography that it kinda makes me dizzy. It truly is an art! The time and thoroughness required to truly master it is humbling.
- svat 7y ago
  I wasn't around at the time and the only thing I know is from reading Knuth's books/papers/interviews. :-) But I imagine that (1) the typesetting machine wouldn't attach to your microcomputer like a peripheral, and probably came with its own computer or equivalent, (2) there wouldn't be too many bits to process: you'd first load your preferred high-resolution fonts onto it with floppy disks or whatever (the shapes for each letter), then the actual output sent to the device would just be the letters and their (relative) positions (not each bit of the page “image”).
tgb 7y ago
What was Knuth's complaint about phototypesetting? I know nothing about this, but isn't the problem that TeX solves that of layout of characters? Which seems like it would still need to be done by either hand or electronically for phototypesetting.
- svat 7y ago
  The fonts weren't as good, even the best that Addison-Wesley could come up with. “I didn’t know what to do. I had spent 15 years writing those books, but if they were going to look awful I didn’t want to write any more.” (Digital Typography, p. 5) (An example of their better-but-still-not-good-enough fonts, though I suspect that by then, after seeing the earlier worse fonts, he had already decided to solve the problem himself: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/367058/wheres-an-example-of-the-bad-typesetting-that-inspired-tex https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/367058/wheres-an-exa...) Knuth started his TeX-and-METAFONT typography project in order to specify the appearance of his books; he wrote TeX so that he could use METAFONT. The former turns out to be useful even without the latter.
agentofuser 7y ago
Curious about the suggestion to try plain TeX. Could you expand on what are the advantages? Do you mean it as a learning stepping stone or for actual usage?
- bch 7y ago
  Upvoted. I hope GP elucidates.
- bingerman 7y ago
  Not OP, but for me it helped to understand what is actually happening. Definitely recommended. Nowadays I use mostly Context (mainly because fonts and creating your own layout is made easy), and never plain Tex, but still I think reading the Texbook was one of the best decisions I've made concerning desktop publishing.
- svat 7y ago
  I meant for actual usage, at least for a while. I wanted to answer your question properly and in detail, but will settle for a somewhat cryptic response (sorry): in short, by using plain TeX instead of LaTeX, you get a workflow where you have a better understanding of what's going on, more control, less fighting the system, much better error messages (as they're now actually related to the code you type, not to macros you didn't write and haven't seen), less craziness of TeX macros (please program in a real language and generate TeX), faster processing (compile time in milliseconds), opportunity to unlearn LaTeX and possibly consider systems like ConTeXt, more fun etc. (Some earlier related comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14480085 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14480085 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18039679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18039679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15734980 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15734980 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15151894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15151894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19790191 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19790191)

by svat 7y ago

kashyapc 7y ago

Thank you for the background and recommendations. Just read the very interesting abstract[1] of the book by Seroul and Levy; queued. (Wish it were a tad less pricey than €64). [1] https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9780387975627 https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9780387975627

cpach 7y ago
If you buy a used copy it will probably be much cheaper. See e.g. https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?bi=0&bx=off&cm_sp=SearchF-_-Advtab1-_-Results&ds=30&recentlyadded=all&sortby=17&sts=t&tn=A%20Beginner%92s%20Book%20of%20TEX https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?bi=0&bx=off&c...
- kashyapc 7y ago
  Ah, thank you. That's much better.

acqq 7y ago

> It was Knuth who noticed a book that had been electronically typeset (Patrick Winston's AI book), realized that electronic typesetting machines actually had enough resolution to print like “real books” Searching for what the actual resolutions were, I saw in your older comment (1) that you mention "Alphatype CRS" and "more than 5000 DPI." If you mention 1977, and there were already 5000+ DPI machines then, I'd really like to read a little more about that: it's impressively more than what the "laser printers" used by mortals were able to have. How did these high resolution machines work? How did they achieve the resolution physically, and how did they manage to process so much bits at the time when the RAM of microcomputers was counted in kilobytes? 1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17917367 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17917367 P.S. Digging deeper: I've just found the reason we see today the text produced with TeX as "too thin": https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/48369/are-the-original-cm-fonts-better-than-the-current-type1-fonts/361722#361722 https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/48369/are-the-origin... and linked there: https://tug.org/TUGboat/tb37-3/tb117ruckert.pdf https://tug.org/TUGboat/tb37-3/tb117ruckert.pdf

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
cpach 7y ago
Wow. That SE post on Computer Modern is really interesting. There are so many details and nuances regarding typography that it kinda makes me dizzy. It truly is an art! The time and thoroughness required to truly master it is humbling.
svat 7y ago
I wasn't around at the time and the only thing I know is from reading Knuth's books/papers/interviews. :-) But I imagine that (1) the typesetting machine wouldn't attach to your microcomputer like a peripheral, and probably came with its own computer or equivalent, (2) there wouldn't be too many bits to process: you'd first load your preferred high-resolution fonts onto it with floppy disks or whatever (the shapes for each letter), then the actual output sent to the device would just be the letters and their (relative) positions (not each bit of the page “image”).

tgb 7y ago

What was Knuth's complaint about phototypesetting? I know nothing about this, but isn't the problem that TeX solves that of layout of characters? Which seems like it would still need to be done by either hand or electronically for phototypesetting.

svat 7y ago
The fonts weren't as good, even the best that Addison-Wesley could come up with. “I didn’t know what to do. I had spent 15 years writing those books, but if they were going to look awful I didn’t want to write any more.” (Digital Typography, p. 5) (An example of their better-but-still-not-good-enough fonts, though I suspect that by then, after seeing the earlier worse fonts, he had already decided to solve the problem himself: https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/367058/wheres-an-example-of-the-bad-typesetting-that-inspired-tex https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/367058/wheres-an-exa...) Knuth started his TeX-and-METAFONT typography project in order to specify the appearance of his books; he wrote TeX so that he could use METAFONT. The former turns out to be useful even without the latter.

agentofuser 7y ago

Curious about the suggestion to try plain TeX. Could you expand on what are the advantages? Do you mean it as a learning stepping stone or for actual usage?

bch 7y ago
Upvoted. I hope GP elucidates.
bingerman 7y ago
Not OP, but for me it helped to understand what is actually happening. Definitely recommended. Nowadays I use mostly Context (mainly because fonts and creating your own layout is made easy), and never plain Tex, but still I think reading the Texbook was one of the best decisions I've made concerning desktop publishing.
svat 7y ago
I meant for actual usage, at least for a while. I wanted to answer your question properly and in detail, but will settle for a somewhat cryptic response (sorry): in short, by using plain TeX instead of LaTeX, you get a workflow where you have a better understanding of what's going on, more control, less fighting the system, much better error messages (as they're now actually related to the code you type, not to macros you didn't write and haven't seen), less craziness of TeX macros (please program in a real language and generate TeX), faster processing (compile time in milliseconds), opportunity to unlearn LaTeX and possibly consider systems like ConTeXt, more fun etc. (Some earlier related comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14480085 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14480085 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18039679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18039679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15734980 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15734980 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15151894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15151894 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19790191 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19790191)