7 ms·
The TeX tuneup of 2021 [pdf]
- macmac 6y agoIronically the link to Knuth's website found in the References [1] is broken due to a linebreak in the url.
- maxerickson 6y agoIt's plain text. Chrome infers a wrong link, a couple other viewers I checked do not infer any link.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- throw0101a 6y ago*TeX :)
- nanna 6y agoThis is a good point, the title is wrong! Knuth named it TeX, with an 'out if kilter' e, to distinguish it from TEX, the Text EXecutive programming language developed by Honeywell. (Knuth, The TeXbook, p. 1) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_Executive_Programming_Language https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Text_Executive_Programming_L...
- Someone 6y agoReading https://projecteuclid.org/euclid.bams/1183544082 https://projecteuclid.org/euclid.bams/1183544082 and https://www.saildart.org/TEXDR.AFT%5B1,DEK%5D1 https://www.saildart.org/TEXDR.AFT%5B1,DEK%5D1, Knuth originally named it TEX and later renamed it to TeX.
- smitty1e 6y agoThe tug page has the boxed set mentioned, but it does not appear to be the 35th Jubilee Edition => http://tug.org/books/#dek http://tug.org/books/#dek Nor does the publisher have any joy yet => https://www.informit.com/search/index.aspx?query=knuth https://www.informit.com/search/index.aspx?query=knuth crosses arms, taps toe
- thaumasiotes 6y agoThe stackexchange username 潇洒张, listed in the references, cannot be highlighted. Does TeX not render chinese characters as text?
- Tomte 6y agoTeX is limited to 127(?) characters, there are several font encoding schemes, none of which are suitable for Chinese. XeTeX and LuaTeX use Unicode, and thus could render the Chinese name as text. But they are extensions of TeX, not TeX proper, which is what Knuth himself uses.
- drfuchs 6y ago256; used to be 128 way back when.
- nanna 6y agoNot sure about TeX but would be surprised if there were issues with Chinese characters in LuaLaTeX or XeLaTeX. It's very uncommon to write in plain TeX today, Knuth is an exception.
- hyakosm 6y agoIn this document, it's rendered in bitmap.
- bluenose69 6y agoKnuth has a way of adding life to what might otherwise be dry material. At least to those of us who admire the man and his contributions, this essay reads like a thriller. I knew from the start that what he said would not matter to me, but yet I was drawn from sentence to sentence, powerless to turn away. Is it just that I'm a fan, having read [1] as a science student? I don't think so, because when I recommend that essay to a student who is frustrated with msword, I almost always get a report about how intriguing it is. Beyond the material, I think a big factor is that it's simply intriguing to hear what a clear thinker spends time thinking about. 1. Knuth, Donald E. “Mathematical Typography.” Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.) 1, no. 2 (March 1979): 337–72 https://projecteuclid.org:443/euclid.bams/1183544082 https://projecteuclid.org:443/euclid.bams/1183544082
- brudgers 6y agoTAoCP is a great book simply in terms of books. It is a plausible candidate as the most important book from the current era. [1] By extension, Knuth is a great writer and his skill in language goes beyond English into mathematics and the logical notation of computer algorithms...like Tolkien, Knuth invents languages in order to enrich his stories. Unlike Tolkien his languages are useful to other scholars. [1] Note I said "plausible." The standard for a rebuttal is implausibility.
- dredmorbius 6y agoAnother possible line of rebuttal might hinge on defining the appropriate era ;-)
- brudgers 6y agoThere's only one current era. TAoCP is a work in progress as we write.
- dredmorbius 6y agoTimelords are inclined to disagree.
- nanna 6y agoUsage of (La)TeX has exploded in recent years, thanks in no small part to Overleaf. Unfortunately the project itself has still been struggling financially, so if you've got the means and want to support its development then do consider joining TUG, the TeX Users Group, the global org which coordinates it's development and community. Perks include being posted copies of TUGboat, the excellent magazine that this Knuth piece is a preprint from. They also send you a DVD of the latest TeXlive, if you want it, you get to vote TUGs elections (or stand if you want!), invites to the annual conference, and get discounts on various (La)TeX, typography, and Knuth books. https://tug.org/forms/current/memberapp.html https://tug.org/forms/current/memberapp.html
- evanb 6y agoSome of my collaborators use Overleaf with the git bridge to interact with our version-controlled drafts. The git bridge is broken, and overwrites git filemodes, erasing executable bits without the user's request; even on files that the Overleaf user doesn't touch. This breaks scripts that we need to produce figures. Every time we have a new paper to work on we have a problem. It drives me crazy. Overleaf claims that this would require a nontrivial overhaul of their software, which I find hard to believe. But their code is complicated enough that I can't just look at it and find the fix. https://github.com/overleaf/overleaf/issues/765 https://github.com/overleaf/overleaf/issues/765
- cozzyd 6y agoOverleaf also doesn't work with symlinks properly.
- nsajko 6y agoThis ancient implementation of TeX is still widely used, but note that there were historically many other implementations, and the current one is LuaTeX, together with its experimental fork called LuaMetaTex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LuaTeX https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LuaTeX https://www.pragma-ade.nl/general/manuals/luametatex.pdf https://www.pragma-ade.nl/general/manuals/luametatex.pdf Similarly, the (less) ancient LaTeX is still widely used, in spite of the existence of the (not so new, but still actively developed) ConTeXt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ConTeXt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ConTeXt
- andrepd 6y agoYou are confusing some things. LaTeX is a set of macros written in TeX, as is ConTeXt. TeX, pdfTeX, XeTeX, and LuaTeX, are all TeX compilers. LuaTeX is not "the current one" in any meaningful way. The most widely used one is pdfTeX.
- nsajko 6y agoI don't see what things am I confusing. But I should have been more clear: when I said that LuaTeX is current, I was referring to how it's still being actively developed. AFAIK pdfTeX and XeTeX get just the occasional bug fix.
- anthk 6y agoThat's not a signal of being used at all. PDFlatex is the most widely used (La)TeX system. You newcomers confuse "new" as "widely used" and that's not the case at all. Unix utilities are old as hell and they are used daily, far more than exa and fd.
- nsajko 6y agoYou misread me, I specifically referred to the older variants as widely used, in contrast to the (somewhat) newer, more developed ones.
- coliveira 6y ago
- gjvc 6y agoHighlight from the article. """ And my fondest recollection from that day was the beaming face of A–W’s cofounder, Mel Cummings, as he held those five volumes in his hands with obvious pride and satisfaction. He had spent his life in the printing industry, and devoted it to producing technical books of the finest quality; so I was delighted to see his delight. """ I met Professor Knuth on his visit to Oxford, UK in 2000, and he was gracious enough to sign my TAoCP volumes.
- guidoism 6y agoKnuth added Oxford commas to the master web files. So, I guess we can all say that we are done here. Goodnight.