A while ago I obtained a copy of "TeX and METAFONT, New directions in Typesetting" and I only today realized that it still has the sheet to mail in if "you have an interest in participating in a TeX users' group"
Besides that it's just bizarre to read
The entire description of both systems is almost half the size of the TeXbook alone
And it uses SAIL's SUAI extended character set
There's a final section of the TeX part all about "Recent extensions to TeX", which is pretty interesting. The final extension it has says that "Control sequences of any length are now remembered in full; the seven-letter truncation mentioned in Chapter 2 no longer happens"
And of course the fonts (and the formatting of the whole book) are quite different
Also, there was little discussion on "alternative TeX formats" the other day and I thought of another one that has somewhat widespread use. GNU's Texinfo
anyway I've looked at the "TeX and METAFONT: New Directions in Typesetting" book in a library too... the second part of it is the TeXbook from before it was called the TeXbook :-)
And I think it's actually more concise and less sprawling than the TeXbook...
well maybe "sprawling" isn't the word... but it seems a bit more coherent / tied together. It's interesting that even as TeX was completely rewritten, the manual didn't change all that much, though the TeXbook does seem to have been stuffed with quite a few double-dangerous-bend sections to cope with the changes
Anyway one thing I remember noticing — and maybe this is still true in the TeXbook too — is that by far the largest chapter was the one titled "Fine points of mathematical typesetting", despite the entire chapter being in a smaller font. I think it shows how much DEK really loves good typography.
@daleif Sorry, I should stop trying to be funny on a Monday morning. It's just that the water doesn't seem horisontal, and the masts not vertical. I blame the photographer. ;-)
TeX hasn't actually seen a lot of uptake outside of its usual domain. texinfo is probably the exception.
Though no doubt people will now pop up to tell me about all those other projects I've never heard of.
I was just talking to one of the SILE developers on the U&L chat. He's a high rep user there.
It seems they are moving forward, and it sounds like they have better traction that it would seem looking at the project page. I imagine it's hard uphill work. Typesetting is no picnic as software projects go.
It would be good for TeX to have some competition. And it's good for users to have choices.
Currently it's TeX or something horrible. I've heard talk about SCRIBE. I wonder if that is still around.
@FaheemMitha It's used for manpages, but really nothing else. (The K&R book was typeset in it but this was in the '80s, possibly before there was a TeX distribution for Unix)
@HaraldHanche-Olsen Yes, I think they came from Norway (don't know which town they visited). There was a Russian pirate ship that got damaged on their way from Norway, so they were making a new huge part on the dock with a chainsaw.
It seems, that the varwidth option for the standalone class limits the output width.
The problem is produced in the following example:
\documentclass[10pt,crop,varwidth]{standalone}
\usepackage{tikz}
\begin{document}%
\begin{tikzpicture}
\pgfsetlinewidth{0.3cm}
\path[draw=red] (0,0) -- (...
@texdr.aft -- That book was published long before there were any alternative formats. Without checking. I believe it describes TeX78, which, if you read carefully, you will find to be rather different from the present "basic" TeX, which is an 8-bit enhancement of TeX82. There was an even earlier TeX manual, which I know to be dealing with TeX78. A version was published by the American Math Society; the first fully printed version was a Stanford Computer Science report.
@daleif -- Tall ships races or visits are always exciting. I'm jealous.
@barbarabeeton Right: I was referring to the discussion about TeX by Topic and Lollipop from two days ago. Also, I recall you mentioning the earlier manual elsewhere on this forum, but I haven't had any luck finding it; I think I'll try again today.
@HaraldHanche-Olsen -- Masts are not always vertical. Take a look at a clipper rig -- masts are definitely raked. The vessels look like they're going fast even when they're tied up at a pier. Just like traditional Chesapeake Bay workboats.
@barbarabeeton I know; but that is most evident when you see the ship from the side. At the viewing angle in this case, that should hardly be noticable, if at all.
@texdr.aft -- The very first manual will slip easily into a pocket, and has a light yellow cover with green printing. The print run wasn't large, so I think finding a copy won't be easy.
@HaraldHanche-Olsen -- Maybe the photo was taken from a floating dock, which can be somewhat unsteady when rocked by waves or overloaded by unruly visitors.
@barbarabeeton @daleif had the sun in his eyes (he said so himself). That is sufficient explanation. And in any case, I have taken gazoodles of crooked photographs myself.
@texdr.aft -- TeX was implemented for Unix quite early on, but K&R were at Bell Labs, home of Troff et al. TeX didn't make inroads there until somewhat later.
@yo' oh it takes a while to fully recover, but thankfully you are doing great. Hopefully the insurance can cover the damage. Regarding the CV spreading procedure, I am in the same page. :)
@daleif @barbarabeeton I can get it in Norway, so you can probably get it too. The annoying popup at the start is just one of those things saying we use cookies, got any problem with that?
@StrongBad I think he's taken your advice to heart, in the meta question, and is going to keep the profile but not participate once he's exhausted his rep with bounties.
@AlanMunn well that is better than nothing. So many knowledgeable and seemingly nice people are leaving (or no longer answering), but there still seems to be a critical mass.
@StrongBad Perhaps they realised that they were spending too much time on TeX SE, and decided to remove from themselves from temptation, and the seductive allure of TeX.
@AlanMunn Are you saying he hasn't been mean to you yet? Unaccountable oversight.
@FaheemMitha they can be rude, but they still feel guilt. As an American I managed to bully my fair share of coworkers and I only had to put up with being called a yank.
@FaheemMitha ask David, Joseph etc, I have no idea how they find the time. Since we use memoir is most of our stuff, I can maintain it during work hours.
@daleif Yes, that's what led me to memoir too. I have a book draft using it and the thesis class I maintain is based on it too. Memoir made making the class relatively simple.
@texdr.aft You don't have to use those margins, you know. I guess he's tried to maximize his use of space. Sometimes I do that too. Though I don't shrink the right margin to zero.
Props to Markus Kohm for bucking the margin mafia.
@FaheemMitha Well, to be fair, it is not zero, but it is very, very narrow. About as narrow as it can be, I think without seriously hurting readability. Doubling it would not harm, I think.
I'm all for going against tradition, and I appreciate the manual. In this case, though, I don't think the particular choices of style really work; once again, this is subjective, and the appearance of a manual would not stop me from using what it describes.
@HaraldHanche-Olsen It almost looks like incorrect scaling of some kind (i.e. the page content is larger than the page size).
@UlrikeFischer I hadn't even considered that; thank you for the perspective. (But it raises the question of what happens in the case that the manual should be on the other side)
@FaheemMitha Of course this is just my personal experience, but I remember years ago when I was answering questions on the site to learn new things, I quickly gave up on answering KOMA questions, since (unlike most other documentation) I could rarely find what I needed in the docs.
@FaheemMitha And my experience with the memoir documentation is quite the opposite.
@AlanMunn I have difficulties too. Quite often the question I have are not answered and then I start to look in the code. E.g. there are lots of commands to change the format of a chapter, but it is not clear which one is suitable to insert some typesetting material.
@AlanMunn well regular users probably don't consider the questions I have to answer ;-). But yes sometimes I wish there were a manual like interface3 for the koma classes. Simply a long list with clear details ...
@PauloCereda -- If that's a bookstore, there will be two reactions from patrons: exasperation (and possible cessation of exploring) or curiosity and an urge to turn all those books spine-side out. Not sure what I would do; probably depends on whether or not I'm in a hurry.
@FaheemMitha -- Kerning basically depends on what's specified in the font. Some fonts have better kerning specs than others, and one situation that's often not handled well is the juxtaposition of a lowercase letter followed by a cap.
@FaheemMitha -- Depends on the font you're using. Knuth's kerning info for CM is generally pretty good, except for the situation I mentioned, so if you're using CM for an English document, the resulting page should appear as a uniform gray. Of course, line-breaking consistency also affects that.
@FaheemMitha yes, although xetex (and especially luatex) can add additional ligatures eg traditional tex ones like --- even if they are not specified in the font
@FaheemMitha the point of kerning is to avoid large white gaps so give the appearance of a uniform grey page not black and white stripes if you look at the page without focussing on the letters
@FaheemMitha -- Hold a page filled with text that uses a single font at a distance where you can't read it, and look for dark or light blotches. If the font has been well designed, with good kerning and line breaks, there won't be any blotches. Uniform gray.
@FaheemMitha yes although that I think is generally applied to inter-word spacing not inter-letter (and it's much harder to solve) kerning is just looking at local issues like Vo needing a bit of negative space
@FaheemMitha In addition to the example by @AlanMunn, let me give you one from Norwegian: The word hoffintriger is a composite word with the two parts hoff (meaning (royal) court) and intriger (meaning intrigues). In this case it would be inappropriate to use the usual ffi ligature. Instead the word should be typeset using the ff ligature followed by the letter i. The Norwegian babel package has a mechanism for achieving this.
On the other hand, we really need a ligature for fj, similar to the fi one, for Norwegian words fjord and fjell (fjord and mountain). But few fonts include this ligature, perhaps because the fj combination is rare in major languages.
@FaheemMitha In Norwegian, we have separate letters that arose as ligatures. Well, at least one: æ was an ae ligature originally. (I think one can debate whether ø was an oe ligature, or å was an aa ligature. I am not strong on the history of writing.)
@FaheemMitha The particular reason behind the fi and fj ligature is that in many fonts, the top of the f would run into the dot over the i or j, unless you push the letters apart, which creates a visible space. Some fonts are designed so that this is not a problem, and those fonts may well do without those ligatures.
It seems, that the varwidth option for the standalone class limits the output width.
The problem is produced in the following example:
\documentclass[10pt,crop,varwidth]{standalone}
\usepackage{tikz}
\begin{document}%
\begin{tikzpicture}
\pgfsetlinewidth{0.3cm}
\path[draw=red] (0,0) -- (...
