#plaintex — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #plaintex, aggregated by home.social.
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Yes, Donald Knuth is a hero and a true renaissance man, and his TeX is an unsurpased achievement, a tool of lasting value.
Back in 1996 I took a few months off for an in-depth study of Knuth's TeX: tokens and boxes and output routines and all. I used plain TeX to write a flexible little macro package for myself, with a minimalist input syntax, set up for my own writing, tailored to my own writing needs.
I still use that same package today, 30 years later, unchanged except for project-specific adjustments. All the materials I give to my students are written in that package, all my papers. A stable writing framework for a lifetime. Few other systems have such stability and power. Thank you, Donald Knuth.
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Yes, Donald Knuth is a hero and a true renaissance man, and his TeX is an unsurpased achievement, a tool of lasting value.
Back in 1996 I took a few months off for an in-depth study of Knuth's TeX: tokens and boxes and output routines and all. I used plain TeX to write a flexible little macro package for myself, with a minimalist input syntax, set up for my own writing, tailored to my own writing needs.
I still use that same package today, 30 years later, unchanged except for project-specific adjustments. All the materials I give to my students are written in that package, all my papers. A stable writing framework for a lifetime. Few other systems have such stability and power. Thank you, Donald Knuth.
-
Yes, Donald Knuth is a hero and a true renaissance man, and his TeX is an unsurpased achievement, a tool of lasting value.
Back in 1996 I took a few months off for an in-depth study of Knuth's TeX: tokens and boxes and output routines and all. I used plain TeX to write a flexible little macro package for myself, with a minimalist input syntax, set up for my own writing, tailored to my own writing needs.
I still use that same package today, 30 years later, unchanged except for project-specific adjustments. All the materials I give to my students are written in that package, all my papers. A stable writing framework for a lifetime. Few other systems have such stability and power. Thank you, Donald Knuth.
-
Yes, Donald Knuth is a hero and a true renaissance man, and his TeX is an unsurpased achievement, a tool of lasting value.
Back in 1996 I took a few months off for an in-depth study of Knuth's TeX: tokens and boxes and output routines and all. I used plain TeX to write a flexible little macro package for myself, with a minimalist input syntax, set up for my own writing, tailored to my own writing needs.
I still use that same package today, 30 years later, unchanged except for project-specific adjustments. All the materials I give to my students are written in that package, all my papers. A stable writing framework for a lifetime. Few other systems have such stability and power. Thank you, Donald Knuth.
-
Yes, Donald Knuth is a hero and a true renaissance man, and his TeX is an unsurpased achievement, a tool of lasting value.
Back in 1996 I took a few months off for an in-depth study of Knuth's TeX: tokens and boxes and output routines and all. I used plain TeX to write a flexible little macro package for myself, with a minimalist input syntax, set up for my own writing, tailored to my own writing needs.
I still use that same package today, 30 years later, unchanged except for project-specific adjustments. All the materials I give to my students are written in that package, all my papers. A stable writing framework for a lifetime. Few other systems have such stability and power. Thank you, Donald Knuth.
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Not sure it counts, but I couldn't cope with the braces-heavy syntax of #LaTeX and wrote my own macro package in #PlainTeX. Have done books in it, all my lecture notes etc. Main design and core commands unchanged since 1997!
Syntax uses empty space and empty lines as delimiters. Eg, my source says
"\ch Introduction
In this book ..."
and TeX then typesets this as chapter 1 with title "Introduction" and "In this book ..." as first para.]
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Not sure it counts, but I couldn't cope with the braces-heavy syntax of #LaTeX and wrote my own macro package in #PlainTeX. Have done books in it, all my lecture notes etc. Main design and core commands unchanged since 1997!
Syntax uses empty space and empty lines as delimiters. Eg, my source says
"\ch Introduction
In this book ..."
and TeX then typesets this as chapter 1 with title "Introduction" and "In this book ..." as first para.]
-
Not sure it counts, but I couldn't cope with the braces-heavy syntax of #LaTeX and wrote my own macro package in #PlainTeX. Have done books in it, all my lecture notes etc. Main design and core commands unchanged since 1997!
Syntax uses empty space and empty lines as delimiters. Eg, my source says
"\ch Introduction
In this book ..."
and TeX then typesets this as chapter 1 with title "Introduction" and "In this book ..." as first para.]
-
Not sure it counts, but I couldn't cope with the braces-heavy syntax of #LaTeX and wrote my own macro package in #PlainTeX. Have done books in it, all my lecture notes etc. Main design and core commands unchanged since 1997!
Syntax uses empty space and empty lines as delimiters. Eg, my source says
"\ch Introduction
In this book ..."
and TeX then typesets this as chapter 1 with title "Introduction" and "In this book ..." as first para.]
-
Not sure it counts, but I couldn't cope with the braces-heavy syntax of #LaTeX and wrote my own macro package in #PlainTeX. Have done books in it, all my lecture notes etc. Main design and core commands unchanged since 1997!
Syntax uses empty space and empty lines as delimiters. Eg, my source says
"\ch Introduction
In this book ..."
and TeX then typesets this as chapter 1 with title "Introduction" and "In this book ..." as first para.]
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Guilty as charged! :-) In my defense, setting up my own macros gave me control over the markup syntax. When writing, I want to use "natural markup", simple commands inserted naturally into the text. Eg, for a new chapter I write
"\chap The Framework
In this chapter, we will ..."
And if I want to \emw emphasise a single word, I simply insert the \emw command before the word. Empty spaces or empty lines act as natural delimiters.
No \begin{}\end{} straightjacket!
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Guilty as charged! :-) In my defense, setting up my own macros gave me control over the markup syntax. When writing, I want to use "natural markup", simple commands inserted naturally into the text. Eg, for a new chapter I write
"\chap The Framework
In this chapter, we will ..."
And if I want to \emw emphasise a single word, I simply insert the \emw command before the word. Empty spaces or empty lines act as natural delimiters.
No \begin{}\end{} straightjacket!
-
Guilty as charged! :-) In my defense, setting up my own macros gave me control over the markup syntax. When writing, I want to use "natural markup", simple commands inserted naturally into the text. Eg, for a new chapter I write
"\chap The Framework
In this chapter, we will ..."
And if I want to \emw emphasise a single word, I simply insert the \emw command before the word. Empty spaces or empty lines act as natural delimiters.
No \begin{}\end{} straightjacket!
-
Guilty as charged! :-) In my defense, setting up my own macros gave me control over the markup syntax. When writing, I want to use "natural markup", simple commands inserted naturally into the text. Eg, for a new chapter I write
"\chap The Framework
In this chapter, we will ..."
And if I want to \emw emphasise a single word, I simply insert the \emw command before the word. Empty spaces or empty lines act as natural delimiters.
No \begin{}\end{} straightjacket!
-
Guilty as charged! :-) In my defense, setting up my own macros gave me control over the markup syntax. When writing, I want to use "natural markup", simple commands inserted naturally into the text. Eg, for a new chapter I write
"\chap The Framework
In this chapter, we will ..."
And if I want to \emw emphasise a single word, I simply insert the \emw command before the word. Empty spaces or empty lines act as natural delimiters.
No \begin{}\end{} straightjacket!