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Knuth: All Questions Answered

Posted by timothy on from the art-of-computer dept.

sunhou writes: "The AMS published a lecture by Donald Knuth called All Questions Answered (pdf), where Knuth simply responded to questions from the audience. Topics ranged from errors in software ('I think Microsoft should say, "You'll get a check from Bill Gates every time you find an error"') to how he gets distracted by fonts on restaurant menus, to software patents. There were some really good questions (and responses)."

3 of 352 comments (clear)

  1. Mirror by Russ+Nelson · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://russnelson.com/fea-knuth.pdf

    --
    Don't piss off The Angry Economist
  2. Re:The technology behind TeX by Lictor · · Score: 5, Informative

    >but the only game in town (for mathematics or anything)? No, not really.

    I can't speak for general publishing, but for serious math publishing I have to respectfully disagree. If you have ever even remotely come into contact with serious mathematics you will be aware that Springer-Verlag (http://www.springer.de/) is one of the major publishers.

    I have never prepared a manuscript for a Springer book or journal that was *not* in TeX format.

    Could you give me some examples of the "quite a lot of software used before latex"? Specifically what "math" publishers use standards other than TeX... I'd truly be interested because I've never come across one.

    As a side note, please be careful not to confuse LaTeX with TeX. LaTeX (which I admit to using most of the time) is kind of like "TeX for dummies". (Thats not entirely fair... LaTeX makes 95% of what I want to do easier and faster than plain TeX... but for that last 5%, LaTeX makes me want to punch things. LaTeX=easy, TeX=flexible).

  3. Online PDF Conversion Here -- by sh0rtie · · Score: 5, Informative



    http://access.adobe.com/adv_form.html

    just enter the url of said pdf and hit submit and voila good ol' html is returned