32 lines
4.0 KiB
HTML
32 lines
4.0 KiB
HTML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="no"?>
|
||
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>TeX</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="../../jargon.css" type="text/css"/><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.61.0"/><link rel="home" href="../index.html" title="The Jargon File"/><link rel="up" href="../T.html" title="T"/><link rel="previous" href="test.html" title="test"/><link rel="next" href="text.html" title="text"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">TeX</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="test.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">T</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="text.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><dt><a id="TeX"/><dt xmlns="" id="TeX"><b>TeX</b>: <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="pronunciation">/tekh/</span>, <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="grammar">n.</span></dt></dt><dd><p>An extremely powerful <a href="../M/macro.html"><i class="glossterm">macro</i></a>-based text
|
||
formatter written by Donald E. <a href="../K/Knuth.html"><i class="glossterm">Knuth</i></a>, very popular
|
||
in the computer-science community (it is good enough to have displaced Unix
|
||
<a href="troff.html"><i class="glossterm">troff</i></a>, the other favored formatter, even at many
|
||
Unix installations). TeX fans insist on the correct (guttural)
|
||
pronunciation, and the correct spelling (all caps, squished together, with
|
||
the E depressed below the baseline; the mixed-case ‘TeX’ is
|
||
considered an acceptable kluge on ASCII-only devices). Fans like to
|
||
proliferate names from the word ‘TeX’ — such as TeXnician
|
||
(TeX user), TeXhacker (TeX programmer), TeXmaster (competent TeX
|
||
programmer), TeXhax, and TeXnique. See also
|
||
<a href="../C/CrApTeX.html"><i class="glossterm">CrApTeX</i></a>.</p><p>Knuth began TeX because he had become annoyed at the declining
|
||
quality of the typesetting in volumes I--III of his monumental
|
||
<i class="citetitle">Art of Computer Programming</i> (see
|
||
<a href="../K/Knuth.html"><i class="glossterm">Knuth</i></a>, also <a href="../B/bible.html"><i class="glossterm">bible</i></a>). In a
|
||
manifestation of the typical hackish urge to solve the problem at hand once
|
||
and for all, he began to design his own typesetting language. He thought
|
||
he would finish it on his sabbatical in 1978; he was wrong by only about 8
|
||
years. The language was finally frozen around 1985, but volume IV of
|
||
<i class="citetitle">The Art of Computer Programming</i> is not expected to
|
||
appear until 2007. The impact and influence of TeX's design has been such
|
||
that nobody minds this very much. Many grand hackish projects have started
|
||
as a bit of <a href="toolsmith.html"><i class="glossterm">toolsmith</i></a>ing on the way to something
|
||
else; Knuth's diversion was simply on a grander scale than most.</p><p>TeX has also been a noteworthy example of free, shared, but
|
||
high-quality software. Knuth offers a monetary award to anyone who found
|
||
and reported bugs dating from before the 1989 code freeze; as the years
|
||
wore on and the few remaining bugs were fixed (and new ones even harder to
|
||
find), the bribe went up. Though well-written, TeX is so large (and so
|
||
full of cutting edge technique) that it is said to have unearthed at least
|
||
one bug in every Pascal system it has been compiled with.</p></dd><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="test.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="../T.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="text.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">test </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> text</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
|