TeX - The ultimate Yakshave

Transcript

1. TEX, the ultimate yakshave
   Florian Gilcher
   March 5, 2015
   

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2. Donald Ervin Knuth
   Born 1938
   Professor at Stanfort
   “father of the analysis of
   algorithms”
   Known both as a
   theoretical and a practical
   computer scientist
   Gives a christmas lecture
   about trees
   Patron saint of yakshaving
   

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3. The art of computer programming
   First released in 1968
   Describes programming a theoretical, but practical computer.
   

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4. Yakshave 0
   Write a book considered a “book of the century”.
   

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5. Yakshave 1
   Invent your own computer to illustrate a point.
   

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6. The state of typesetting
   Less then ideal.
   

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7. In 1976, Knuth prepared a second edition of Volume 2, requiring it
   to be typeset again, but the style of type used in the first edition
   (called hot type) was no longer available. In 1977, he decided to
   spend some time creating something more suitable. Eight years
   later, he returned with TEX, which is currently used for all volumes.
   

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8. Implementation strategy and language
   TEX is implemented in WEB, a dialect of PASCAL, that allows for
   literate programming, an idea invented by Donald Knuth.
   In literate programming, normal text is interleaved with specially
   marked code, putting Documentation first.
   

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9. Yakshave 2&3
   Invent a programming paradigm.
   Implement your own programming langage dialect to support
   it.
   

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10. Problems
    Word breaking, line breaking and general text layout was not
    properly done back then.
    

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11. Yakshave 4
    Invent a text layout algorithm (“Knuth’s algorithm”).
    

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12. More Problems
    Layout algorithms lay out objects of several sizes (characters).
    Characters are provided by font files.
    Free fonts were few and far between.
    

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13. Yakshave 5
    Design a font: “Computer Modern”.
    

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14. Yakshave 6
    Invent and implement a program to describe vector fonts:
    METAFONT.
    

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15. Legacy
    Later evolved into METAPOST for generic vector drawing.
    

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16. Seriously, I’m still waiting for a JavaScript library to implement
    diagram layouting of METAPOSTs quality.
    

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18. Aside: Versioning
    TEX versions approach π.
    METAFONT versions approach Euler’s number.
    

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19. Yakshave 7
    Implement a versioning scheme no one else uses.
    

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20. Independence
    What does a typesetting system produce? Something printable.
    Every printer back then had their custom format.
    

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21. Yakshave 8
    Implement your own Device Independent Format (DVI)
    

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22. We finally got a system here.
    

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23. Community shaving is best shaving
    Leslie Lamport implemented a macro set for TEX, called L
    A
    TEX
    Others came up with ConTeXt
    

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24. Community Yakshave 0
    Create not one, but two ungoogleable projects.
    

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25. Community shaving is best shaving
    Before UTF-8, another encoding (T1) was invented, to work
    with characters beyond ASCII
    

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26. Changes
    We’d like to work with semi-modern formats, e.g. PostScript or
    PDF.
    And how about scripting the whole thing?
    And use modern font formats and UTF-8?
    

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27. Changes
    pdfla,tex
    luala,tex
    xela,tex
    

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28. You cannot reimplement TEX
    TEX is free software, but any modification must not be called TEX.
    

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29. You cannot reimplement TEX
    TEX is free software, but any modification must not be called TEX.
    Their output might differ.
    

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30. You cannot reimplement TEX
    TEX is free software, but any modification must not be called TEX.
    Their output might differ.
    On the plus side, TEX is really just the layouter.
    

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31. Community Yakshave 1
    Transpile WEB to C and work from there.
    

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32. Community Yakshave 2
    Build a lot of tooling around it.
    

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33. Community Yakshave 2
    Build a lot of tooling around it.
    For years and years.
    

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34. Frustrations
    TEX is OLD
    TEX is ODD
    TEX has legacy
    TEX is HUGE
    Backwards-compatibility trumps everything
    

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35. TEX is not a programming language
    Lots of vocabulary is from typesetting
    Primitives for logic are bad
    Do you know what a strut is?
    A quad, etc?
    

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36. Distribution: texlive
    2.8 GB
    never removes things
    renames on breaking changes
    compiles everything under the sun
    huge toolchain for document management
    

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37. Distribution: texlive basic
    98MB
    allows package by package downloads
    

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38. A system with documentation culture
    The documentation is the test case
    From TEX on.
    A predictable learning curve
    

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39. Fast
    Still one of the fastest typesetters around
    Memory-conservative
    Batchable
    

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40. High quality
    Exact, repeatable, layout
    Font support even for weird scripts is great
    Lots of support for drawings
    

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41. Featureful
    Lots of special symbols
    Support for all fields of science
    Support for References and Bibliography (through packages)
    

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42. What can you learn from TEX?
    The drawbacks and merits of strict backwards compatibility
    How software was written 40 years ago
    The amount of effort necessary to replace this.
    Actual typography
    

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43. Earn money with TEX
    Both TEX and “TAOCP” offer bounties for bugs.
    Typesetting bugs are bugs.
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knuth_reward_check
    The checks are rare.
    

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45. Examples
    

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46. Thank you
    

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