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De - Pt| English Dictionary: TeX | by the DICT Development Group |
| 2 results for TeX | |
| From Jargon File (4.2.0, 31 JAN 2000) [jargon]: | |
|
TeX /tekh/ n. An extremely powerful {macro}-based text formatter written by Donald E. {Knuth}, very popular in the computer-science community (it is good enough to have displaced Unix {{troff}}, 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 {CrApTeX}. Knuth began TeX because he had become annoyed at the declining quality of the typesetting in volumes I-III of his monumental "Art of Computer Programming" (see {Knuth}, also {bible}). 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 "The Art of Computer Programming" is not expected to appear until 2002. 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 {toolsmith}ing on the way to something else; Knuth's diversion was simply on a grander scale than most. TeX has also been a noteworthy example of free, shared, but high-quality software. Knuth offers a monetary awards 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. | |
| From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (15Feb98) [foldoc]: | |
|
TeX formatter written by {Donald Knuth}, very popular in academia, especially in the computer-science community (it is good enough to have displaced {Unix} {troff}, the other favoured formatter, even at many {Unix} installations). The first version of TeX was written in the programming language {SAIL}, to run on a {PDP-10} under Stanford's {WAITS} {operating system}. Knuth began TeX because he had become annoyed at the declining quality of the typesetting in volumes I-III of his monumental "Art of Computer Programming" (see {Knuth}, also {bible}). 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 "The Art of Computer Programming" has yet to appear as of mid-1997. (However, the third edition of volumes I and II have come out). 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 {toolsmithing} on the way to something else; Knuth's diversion was simply on a grander scale than most. {Guy Steele} happened to be at Stanford during the summer of 1978, when Knuth was developing his first version of TeX. When he returned to {MIT} that fall, he rewrote TeX's {I/O} to run under {ITS}. TeX has also been a noteworthy example of free, shared, but high-quality software. Knuth offers monetary awards to people who find and report a bug in it: for each bug the award is doubled. (This has not made Knuth poor, however, as there have been very few bugs and in any case a cheque proving that the owner found a bug in TeX is rarely cashed). 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. 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. Several document processing systems are based on TeX, notably {LaTeX} Lamport TeX - incorporates document styles for books, letters, slides, etc., {jadeTeX} uses TeX as a backend for printing from {James' DSSSL Engine}, and {Texinfo}, the {GNU} document processing system. Numerous extensions to TeX exist, among them {BibTeX} for bibliographies (distributed with LaTeX), {PDFTeX} modifies TeX to produce {PDF} and {Omega} extends TeX to use the {Unicode} character set. For some reason, TeX uses its own variant of the {point}, the {TeX point}. See also {Comprehensive TeX Archive Network}. {(ftp://labrea.stanford.edu/tex/)}. E-mail: (2002-03-11) | |
