4 ms·

Makes a good case for advancing digital versions of text books...

anuragramdasan 13y ago
Probably. But still printed books are going to be the most widely used approach and giving such a treatment to education related books are never good for students.
reikonomusha 13y ago
If there is any book that you should get in paper form, it is TAoCP. This is one book where the author has taken great care, and decades of work, to truly build the book from the ground up. The book, the fonts, and the style were developed for paper. Knuth even has 5 other volumes of books containing the instructions and source code to reproduce almost every single curve, stroke, and space you see in the books. I think advocating digital publishing is probably good, but not for all things. Books shouldn't be treated as source code with continuous deployment. Even one word on one page can massively restructure the rest of the document, making it extremely difficult to coordinate and fix. What I think should be fixed is the dissemination of authentic books at a reasonable price, for especially students who typically don't have much money at all.
- pmiller2 13y ago
  I agree wholeheartedly with this. As an owner of all 4 volumes currently out, I have to say I enjoy everything about these books, except for the choice of MIX as the programming language. :P
- jpatokal 13y ago
  Don't forget the typesetting: Knuth wrote TeX because he was unhappy with the alternatives.
  - billforsternz 13y ago
    He didn't forget the typesetting. He (the parent) was basically writing about the typesetting.
mikevm 13y ago
Last I heard from the publisher, they are working on digital editions of TAoCP, not sure when it will be ready though (I was told that it will be of the quality that people expect from Knuth).
- soperj 13y ago
  I managed to get a digital version of it off tpb.
  - e12e 13y ago
    In LaTeX, or a pdf stuffed with jpegs?
    - mikevm 13y ago
      I doubt a LaTeX version is available of the old volumes. You can get vector (draft) PDFs of parts of the newly released 4th volumes though, since Knuth released the drafts himself. What's interesting is that a draft version of Concrete Mathematics is available (by doing a simple Google search), and it looks very similar to the final edition. I'm not sure why the publisher wouldn't just release the finalized PDF as the draft looks pretty good on my iPad.
      - e12e 13y ago
        You doubt that a LaTeX version exists, or that one is made available for publication? It is my understanding that part of the reason for writing TeX in the first place, was for use in personal publications...?
        mikevm 13y ago
        I didn't doubt it existed, I doubted that it was publicly available.
    - soperj 13y ago
      Sorry for the late reply. It was pdfs.

Probably. But still printed books are going to be the most widely used approach and giving such a treatment to education related books are never good for students.

reikonomusha 13y ago

If there is any book that you should get in paper form, it is TAoCP. This is one book where the author has taken great care, and decades of work, to truly build the book from the ground up. The book, the fonts, and the style were developed for paper. Knuth even has 5 other volumes of books containing the instructions and source code to reproduce almost every single curve, stroke, and space you see in the books. I think advocating digital publishing is probably good, but not for all things. Books shouldn't be treated as source code with continuous deployment. Even one word on one page can massively restructure the rest of the document, making it extremely difficult to coordinate and fix. What I think should be fixed is the dissemination of authentic books at a reasonable price, for especially students who typically don't have much money at all.

pmiller2 13y ago
I agree wholeheartedly with this. As an owner of all 4 volumes currently out, I have to say I enjoy everything about these books, except for the choice of MIX as the programming language. :P
jpatokal 13y ago
Don't forget the typesetting: Knuth wrote TeX because he was unhappy with the alternatives.
- billforsternz 13y ago
  He didn't forget the typesetting. He (the parent) was basically writing about the typesetting.

mikevm 13y ago

Last I heard from the publisher, they are working on digital editions of TAoCP, not sure when it will be ready though (I was told that it will be of the quality that people expect from Knuth).

soperj 13y ago
I managed to get a digital version of it off tpb.
- e12e 13y ago
  In LaTeX, or a pdf stuffed with jpegs?
  - mikevm 13y ago
    I doubt a LaTeX version is available of the old volumes. You can get vector (draft) PDFs of parts of the newly released 4th volumes though, since Knuth released the drafts himself. What's interesting is that a draft version of Concrete Mathematics is available (by doing a simple Google search), and it looks very similar to the final edition. I'm not sure why the publisher wouldn't just release the finalized PDF as the draft looks pretty good on my iPad.
    - e12e 13y ago
      You doubt that a LaTeX version exists, or that one is made available for publication? It is my understanding that part of the reason for writing TeX in the first place, was for use in personal publications...?
      - mikevm 13y ago
        I didn't doubt it existed, I doubted that it was publicly available.
  - soperj 13y ago
    Sorry for the late reply. It was pdfs.