Comments on: TNT Is Not TeX

By: brian

brian — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 19:21:03 +0000

@Joel: “What is the name of the famous architect you mention that advocates a bomb in the basement…?” I was hoping you would tell me. It’s something I read long ago, and I’ve been unable to retrieve the details either from my own neural network or from the collective memory of Google. I don’t think I made it up. But there’s a chance the architect was Howard Roark.

In the matter of 854.9176302, the question for me is how Don Knuth pronounces the numeral “0.” I don’t know of a word for naught that falls alphabetically between three and two.

By: Jim Ward

Jim Ward — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 13:37:35 +0000

Speaking of obsolete software, my Aunt Jemima microwave bacon treat said to cook for 2 1/2 minutes, so I punched in 150 and it came out soggy. I blame the Babylonians and their base 60 time keeping.

By: Snarkyxanf

Snarkyxanf — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 02:19:38 +0000

As a fourth answer, the github user says: when he dies, TeX will be at \pi forever, but it will be forked immediately.

By: Joel

Joel — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 20:58:52 +0000

The idea of planned destruction is compelling. What is the name of the famous architect you mention that advocates a bomb in the basement of great buildings that explodes in fifty years to pave the way for novelty?

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 13:03:30 +0000

@Bill Mill: the iPad 2 hardware is capable of nearly 2 Gflops; that’s a completely untuned LINPACK benchmark that you referenced, a terrible way to measure hardware performance.

By: non-user

non-user — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 09:53:35 +0000

There’s lout:

http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/lout/

– an experience using it –

http://www.charlietanksley.net/philtex/lout-an-alternative-to-latex/

By: David Arceneaux

David Arceneaux — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 09:29:26 +0000

At the time Knuth came up with that number, area codes could only be of the form [2-9][01][2-9]. San Bernardino was in the dreaded 909 area code.

By: David Leung

David Leung — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 08:25:26 +0000

What about Lyx? (http://www.lyx.org/)

When I first used it years ago, I thought it was a big step up from (La)Tex.

By: Victor

Victor — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 07:33:51 +0000

Hey Rahul,

Thank you for the links.

By: John F. Miller

John F. Miller — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 06:56:55 +0000

TeX syntax is awful and even Knuth knew it when it was written. When asked for the grammar specification he famously replied “The grammar is what ever TeX will parse.” TeX’s macro system was quirky in 1980 and by todays language standards is downright archaic. The Modern parser theory that makes C/C++/Java feel cluttered and verbose makes TeX look and feel quixotic.

I have to believe that the underlying typesetting engine is still a marvel else we would not still be using it, but please oh please give us a better input language with more power and a better cleaner syntax.

I look forward to supporting any project with such goals.

By: K

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 05:14:17 +0000

854.9176302

(854) 917.6302

I wonder who that belonged to when the document was published?

By: Rahul

Rahul — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 04:23:19 +0000

I agree with your analysis of Tex. I also find the markup language very arcane, and not compositional at all. It is rather hard to make sense of some of the Tex and Latex macros that experts write (And I am saying this as some one who has to work in Latex quite often). Surely, there has to be a better interface to typesetting?

The best approach I have seen so far is to use direct postscript which is a much better language than Tex. See http://www.cappella.demon.co.uk/tinyfiles/e-guide.pdf
and
http://www.anastigmatix.net/postscript/direct.html
for examples of how postscript can be used. Just like Tex, postscript also guarantees that your documents will look the same a hundred years from now. More over, the language itself is flexible enough to allow further development.

By: Foo

Foo — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 04:17:14 +0000

854 is the area code for San Bernadino. Any connection?

By: Peter

Peter — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 03:45:39 +0000

I love TeX as a great typesetting system. However, it has been the only way to write mathematics for such a long time that TeX is considered the best tool for *writing* mathematics (instead of considering it to be the best tool for *typesetting* mathematics).

It’s a bit like calligraphy vs everyday writing — nobody would think less of the content of a quick note (say in the margin of a book claiming a short proof…) and few people write calligraphy in every personal note.

If you are not set on typesetting with TeX-quality or LaTeX-package-extravaganza, then I think there is an excellent tool for quickly writing mathematics — without the full power of TeX but more than enough for an initial draft or a short document.

Namely, what people have become used to on MathOverflow and stackexchange sites (and elsewhere): markdown+MathJax.

It’s light weight, pure text, can be converted back to TeX (e.g. using pandoc). There’s a (very young) opensource editor that I’ve used successfully with students (disclaimer: the author is a friend). It’s not perfect, but I’ve found it extremely useful (especially for writing on wordpress actually).

By: José Figueroa-O'Farrill

José Figueroa-O'Farrill — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 01:45:01 +0000

@S2 There is no need to type anything if you use a context-aware editor (e.g., one of the emacsen). Emacs + AuCTeX make typing *TeX documents virtually effortless.