5 ms·

The Art of Computer Typography

169 points by wlll 14y ago

jgrahamc 14y ago
This blog post is pretty light. If you really care about Knuth's work on METAFONT then you should just read the source code. It's written using WEB: http://www.tex.ac.uk/ctan/systems/knuth/dist/mf/mf.web http://www.tex.ac.uk/ctan/systems/knuth/dist/mf/mf.web WEB is a language created by Knuth that supports his notion of literate programming.
- chj 14y ago
  It is impossible, but how I wish he would rewrite it in cweb.
  - fusiongyro 14y ago
    I wish the whole thing were tossed out and rewritten. The algorithms TeX uses are amazing and the output is phenomenal (especially using ConTeXt), but TeX itself is an abomination and LaTeX somehow manages to be worse.
    - vph 14y ago
      TEX's implementation is great, considering it's essentially unchanged for the last 30 years. It's hard to name one software that currently exists in its original form that long.
      - lrem 14y ago
        What certainly doesn't mean it would be less great if done with less ancient tools. The problem is layers over layers of fossilized complexity. The LaTeX distribution in my laptop is 3.1GB. It contains 344 files in its bin directory. I'm pretty sure the beautiful typesetting can be achieved in a leaner way.
        keithpeter 14y ago
        Disclaimer: I'm not a programmer Could this become an open source type project with a core engine exposing an api and additional modules written in commonly available languages to add functionality? Once the core engine is stable, it should (in theory) fly...
        fusiongyro 14y ago
        I believe this is one of the objectives of LuaTeX. Lua is a much saner programming language than TeX.
        lrem 14y ago
        Of course it could. But then, why would anyone do that? You can't compete with TeX on price, on correctness and quite probably not on quality of output. You're left with ease of use and performance. Not sure either it actually warrants such a huge undertaking as recreating TeX. This leaves open source typesetting a hostage of its own success.
        adiM 14y ago
        So you would prefer one monolithic binary over a collection of binaries each of which does a specific task (bibtex for biographies, xindy for indexing, dvips for converting dvi to ps, etc.). For comparison, the git installation on my computer contains some 160 binaries (hidden in a directory different than /usr/bin). Should git be rewritten in a leaner way as well? Most of the size of a TeX distribution is due to the fonts and the documentation. I did not analyze TeX Live distribution due to its size, but ConTeXt standalone (which is a distribution just containing files needed for context), is around 230MB, out of which 100MB is fonts, 45MB is binaries, 42MB are core macro files, and 26MB is third party modules (and their documentation). You will get similar numbers if you install only the LaTeX packages that you need. Blame your distro's packagers for forcing you to install a single monolithic 3GB package.
        fusiongyro 14y ago
        Most of those git binaries are links to git for tab completion in your shell. DVI is exactly what we're talking about: a strange custom format that only exists to be transformed into formats we want. A modern TeX should produce PDF output with no DVI intermediate stage. Same story with Metafont. Outside math, people want good fonts developed by typographers. Those fonts don't show up in Metafont or TFM format, they show up in OTF and TTF. Getting TeX to handle these is quite a chore, but even if you do, you're still going to have Metafont and all the strange intermediate files it creates lying around on your filesystem. There is a reason no other software is built like TeX: it's terrible. But for its history and the fact it does the job really well, nobody would tolerate this mess.
- sunkencity 14y ago
  Re literate programming. A scientist friend of mine likes to build his articles so that the graphs in a TeX are generated from an R script. Makes it easy to change some variables or try different input. sweave is another solution http://www.statistik.lmu.de/~leisch/Sweave/ http://www.statistik.lmu.de/~leisch/Sweave/
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
- tarr11 14y ago
  I'm going to start using "el_gordo" to represent int.max like Knuth does.
- cocoflunchy 14y ago
  Oh my god this is so awesome. The version numbers are increasing asymptotically to e (2.718281...).
  - keithpeter 14y ago
    TeX increments 3.14159... and it will be pi when Knuth achieves equilibrium. He no longer sends cheques for finding bugs... http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/news08.html http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/news08.html One of the originals
- jasomill 14y ago
  Of which your source file is an excellent example. Run, IIRC, weave mf.web to generate TeX sources for a camera-ready, exhaustively commented version of the source code that has even been published in hardcover[1]. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Computers-Typesetting-Volume-Metafont-Program/dp/0201134381 http://www.amazon.com/Computers-Typesetting-Volume-Metafont-...
sp332 14y ago
Here's a little video (and transcript) of Knuth describing how hard it is to make a general system for describing type: http://www.webofstories.com/play/17114 http://www.webofstories.com/play/17114 My favorite part is when he's fighting with generalizing the 'S' and his wife suggests, "Well why don't you just make it S-shaped?"
- mdaniel 14y ago
  I hope his classroom lectures don't have that same meter; it is very distracting. I'm probably going to hell for blaspheming against Knuth. That said, thank you for posting the link - that site looks very interesting.
sunkencity 14y ago
Interesting! I use (La)TeX but I didn't know what metafont was about. Even though I am pretty good at identifying typefaces I have forever damaged my changes of identifying the standard mac fonts like Palatino, Times, Helvetica in print. Rendered as bitmap (like on a 9" Macintosh Plus) I have no problem in telling them apart.
epsil 14y ago
For the Tolkien fans, Johan Winge's Tengwar Annatar font was created with METAFONT, mftrace (using potrace) and FontForge. The design is meant to simulate a nib pen, and METAFONT is particularly apt at producing calligraphic letter shapes. http://home.student.uu.se/jowi4905/fonts/annatar.html http://home.student.uu.se/jowi4905/fonts/annatar.html
TwoBit 14y ago
TeX is great but in serious need of a rewrite. I'm not sure it will ever happen.
ralph 14y ago
If anyone's not sure of the advantages of a text processor, like TeX or troff, over a WYSIWYG (or WYSI-all-YG, as Kernighan said) application, then http://www.schaffter.ca/mom/mom-02.html http://www.schaffter.ca/mom/mom-02.html may help.

169 points by wlll 14y ago

This blog post is pretty light. If you really care about Knuth's work on METAFONT then you should just read the source code. It's written using WEB: http://www.tex.ac.uk/ctan/systems/knuth/dist/mf/mf.web http://www.tex.ac.uk/ctan/systems/knuth/dist/mf/mf.web WEB is a language created by Knuth that supports his notion of literate programming.

chj 14y ago
It is impossible, but how I wish he would rewrite it in cweb.
- fusiongyro 14y ago
  I wish the whole thing were tossed out and rewritten. The algorithms TeX uses are amazing and the output is phenomenal (especially using ConTeXt), but TeX itself is an abomination and LaTeX somehow manages to be worse.
  - vph 14y ago
    TEX's implementation is great, considering it's essentially unchanged for the last 30 years. It's hard to name one software that currently exists in its original form that long.
    - lrem 14y ago
      What certainly doesn't mean it would be less great if done with less ancient tools. The problem is layers over layers of fossilized complexity. The LaTeX distribution in my laptop is 3.1GB. It contains 344 files in its bin directory. I'm pretty sure the beautiful typesetting can be achieved in a leaner way.
      - keithpeter 14y ago
        Disclaimer: I'm not a programmer Could this become an open source type project with a core engine exposing an api and additional modules written in commonly available languages to add functionality? Once the core engine is stable, it should (in theory) fly...
        fusiongyro 14y ago
        I believe this is one of the objectives of LuaTeX. Lua is a much saner programming language than TeX.
        lrem 14y ago
        Of course it could. But then, why would anyone do that? You can't compete with TeX on price, on correctness and quite probably not on quality of output. You're left with ease of use and performance. Not sure either it actually warrants such a huge undertaking as recreating TeX. This leaves open source typesetting a hostage of its own success.
      - adiM 14y ago
        So you would prefer one monolithic binary over a collection of binaries each of which does a specific task (bibtex for biographies, xindy for indexing, dvips for converting dvi to ps, etc.). For comparison, the git installation on my computer contains some 160 binaries (hidden in a directory different than /usr/bin). Should git be rewritten in a leaner way as well? Most of the size of a TeX distribution is due to the fonts and the documentation. I did not analyze TeX Live distribution due to its size, but ConTeXt standalone (which is a distribution just containing files needed for context), is around 230MB, out of which 100MB is fonts, 45MB is binaries, 42MB are core macro files, and 26MB is third party modules (and their documentation). You will get similar numbers if you install only the LaTeX packages that you need. Blame your distro's packagers for forcing you to install a single monolithic 3GB package.
        fusiongyro 14y ago
        Most of those git binaries are links to git for tab completion in your shell. DVI is exactly what we're talking about: a strange custom format that only exists to be transformed into formats we want. A modern TeX should produce PDF output with no DVI intermediate stage. Same story with Metafont. Outside math, people want good fonts developed by typographers. Those fonts don't show up in Metafont or TFM format, they show up in OTF and TTF. Getting TeX to handle these is quite a chore, but even if you do, you're still going to have Metafont and all the strange intermediate files it creates lying around on your filesystem. There is a reason no other software is built like TeX: it's terrible. But for its history and the fact it does the job really well, nobody would tolerate this mess.
sunkencity 14y ago
Re literate programming. A scientist friend of mine likes to build his articles so that the graphs in a TeX are generated from an R script. Makes it easy to change some variables or try different input. sweave is another solution http://www.statistik.lmu.de/~leisch/Sweave/ http://www.statistik.lmu.de/~leisch/Sweave/
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
tarr11 14y ago
I'm going to start using "el_gordo" to represent int.max like Knuth does.
cocoflunchy 14y ago
Oh my god this is so awesome. The version numbers are increasing asymptotically to e (2.718281...).
- keithpeter 14y ago
  TeX increments 3.14159... and it will be pi when Knuth achieves equilibrium. He no longer sends cheques for finding bugs... http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/news08.html http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/news08.html One of the originals
jasomill 14y ago
Of which your source file is an excellent example. Run, IIRC, weave mf.web to generate TeX sources for a camera-ready, exhaustively commented version of the source code that has even been published in hardcover[1]. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Computers-Typesetting-Volume-Metafont-Program/dp/0201134381 http://www.amazon.com/Computers-Typesetting-Volume-Metafont-...

sp332 14y ago

Here's a little video (and transcript) of Knuth describing how hard it is to make a general system for describing type: http://www.webofstories.com/play/17114 http://www.webofstories.com/play/17114 My favorite part is when he's fighting with generalizing the 'S' and his wife suggests, "Well why don't you just make it S-shaped?"

mdaniel 14y ago
I hope his classroom lectures don't have that same meter; it is very distracting. I'm probably going to hell for blaspheming against Knuth. That said, thank you for posting the link - that site looks very interesting.

sunkencity 14y ago

Interesting! I use (La)TeX but I didn't know what metafont was about. Even though I am pretty good at identifying typefaces I have forever damaged my changes of identifying the standard mac fonts like Palatino, Times, Helvetica in print. Rendered as bitmap (like on a 9" Macintosh Plus) I have no problem in telling them apart.

epsil 14y ago

For the Tolkien fans, Johan Winge's Tengwar Annatar font was created with METAFONT, mftrace (using potrace) and FontForge. The design is meant to simulate a nib pen, and METAFONT is particularly apt at producing calligraphic letter shapes. http://home.student.uu.se/jowi4905/fonts/annatar.html http://home.student.uu.se/jowi4905/fonts/annatar.html

TwoBit 14y ago

TeX is great but in serious need of a rewrite. I'm not sure it will ever happen.

ralph 14y ago

If anyone's not sure of the advantages of a text processor, like TeX or troff, over a WYSIWYG (or WYSI-all-YG, as Kernighan said) application, then http://www.schaffter.ca/mom/mom-02.html http://www.schaffter.ca/mom/mom-02.html may help.