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Stop the Math Press's Presses — Knuth Announces iTex

After Donald Knuth's anticipated "earthshaking announcement," it's safe to say that the world is still here. yowlanku writes "Christoper Adams tweeted live from TUG 2010 Conference that 'Donald Knuth's TeX successor will be named iTeX.' " Knuth "also stated that this successor of TeX will have features like 3-D printing, animation, stereographic sound."

25 of 284 comments (clear)

  1. Not on the iPhone by biryokumaru · · Score: 4, Funny

    I hear it's already been rejected from the App store.

    --
    When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
    1. Re:Not on the iPhone by Locke2005 · · Score: 4, Funny

      What did he expect? It supports printing!

      --
      I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
    2. Re:Not on the iPhone by lostmongoose · · Score: 5, Insightful

      ...yes?

    3. Re:Not on the iPhone by Stumbles · · Score: 5, Funny

      Yes. One bad Apple spoils the whole bunch.

      --
      My karma is not a Chameleon.
    4. Re:Not on the iPhone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Not true, historically the ratio was about:
      90% Microsoft bashing
      10% Intellectual property bashing

      Then it turned into:
      50% Microsoft bashing
      50% Intellectual property bashing

      Only recently did Apple fight their way into the mix, but they've gained market share quickly, eating primarily into Microsoft bashing. What's interesting, is it parallels the browser wars a bit, though the swings are more dramatic here. But:
      Microsoft=IE (obviously)
      Intellectual Property=Firefox (open source, makes sense)
      Apple=Chrome (works in the both big brothery sense)

      I'm not sure what Opera is, maybe SCO?

    5. Re:Not on the iPhone by msauve · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Google is the new Apple
      Apple is the new Microsoft
      Microsoft is the new IBM
      IBM is just old

      --
      "National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
    6. Re:Not on the iPhone by bonch · · Score: 4, Insightful

      What do you expect? Apple took the wind out of Slashdotters' fantasy of Linux on the desktop supplanting Windows, so there's some bitterness there.

    7. Re:Not on the iPhone by AshtangiMan · · Score: 5, Funny

      The new DEC

  2. Enough with the iNames already! by Cordath · · Score: 4, Funny

    Name it after some other deliberately mispronounced form of fetish-wear. I'd happily write papers in buttplug (pronounced bootploog).

    1. Re:Enough with the iNames already! by bmo · · Score: 5, Funny

      I'd happily write papers in buttplug (pronounced bootploog).

      bootploog

      Canadian, eh?

      --
      BMO - Happy Canada Day!

    2. Re:Enough with the iNames already! by Pfhorrest · · Score: 4, Funny

      I'd happily write papers in buttplug (pronounced bootploog).

      Needs more umlauts for that:

      Büttplüg.

      --
      -Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
      "I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
  3. Some details from the conference by WillAdams · · Score: 4, Informative

    here:

    http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1702818&cid=32752126

    It was an hilarious presentation in the spirit of his first publication... http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/01/the-enduring-art-of-computer-programming.html (scroll down to Potrzebie)

    to repeat (w/o the geocoord)

    a successor to TeX which he has been working on for some time

    scratch tex78 and tex82

    so making up for assumptions which don't fit the internet age

    jokes about measuring and math in TeX .4pt == .3999pt

    maxdimen too small, 1sp too large

    tunnel vision caused by computers of the day

    subset of XML uses Unicode automatic everything

    all directions and all dimensions

    hypertext

    text audio video sensors GPScoords accelerometers haptics

    midi input to score and back to music

    no macros --- menu driven like Word but enhanced

    spoken command and gestures

    \i \TeX (wrapped on a sphere)

    spoken name accompanied by (optional) ringing bell

    not programmed directly

    1289 bugs in TeX
    571 bugs in metafont

    Project Marianne

    www.projectmarianne.com

    Project Biturgical

    written in Scheme using all buzzwords

    pricing - monthly subscription on cloud

    first year one month free

    pricing based on internet speed

    will change everyday

    life is too short to reread anything

    will benefit world's economy, user's can sell documents

    network of certified consultants

    online help
        - for dummies
        - for wizards
        - personalized on-line

    symbolic equations
    graphics
    maps
    satellite photos

    \i\TeX hyper document

    math mode like mathml --- must evaluate

    avatars

    hyperbolic geometry

    videoconferencing

    world-class photo retouching

    character, face, speech recignition

    cognition

    output format:
        - lasercutters
        - embroidering machines
        - 3D printers
        - plasma cutters

    interactive cookbook

    life as hypertext document

    released next month

    pending patent applications

    --
    Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
  4. Re:3D Printing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    It's usually referred to as Rapid Prototyping, and properties are limited to whatever the particular technology you're using can support. The good news is some companies (disclaimer - previous employer) like Stratasys have evolved their FDM technology to the point of creating usable plastic parts.

    Sadly, the venerable, verbose, and error-prone STL file format is still the standard input for most of these systems.

    So, perhaps Tex will support STL output for 3D printing :)

  5. Re:TFA is 22hrs stale tweet by laffer1 · · Score: 4, Informative

    according to google, his presentation was a hoax.

  6. Re:Lame Indeed by makapuf · · Score: 5, Funny

    Is it a plane ? Is it a bird ? No, it's a Woosh !

  7. Re:"...the world is still here." by Yoozer · · Score: 5, Funny

    criticize the kerning

    Perhaps you meant "keming"?

  8. Re:Bummer. by martin-boundary · · Score: 4, Funny

    The way I see it, he's announced that the proof of P = NP will fit easily in the margin of an iTeX file...

  9. Google search for "knuth announcement" produced... by jthill · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I wonder if this would surprise him: at 4AM Pacific today, I searched for "knuth announcement".

    Google told me that was the 27th most common search over the preceding hour.

    --
    As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
  10. Re:Perspective vs. Tunnel Vision by steveha · · Score: 4, Informative

    All 27 users of TeX will be quite excited about this.

    Ah yes, the reliable old joke: all X people who care will be happy, where X is a humorously small number. Classic!

    But kidding aside, TeX is in heavy use. Most TeX users use LaTeX or even LyX to wrap TeX and make it easier, but TeX is in there doing the work.

    My understanding is that TeX is standard in the academic world, because it can correctly typeset serious math equations. Also, Wikipedia uses TeX to process all <math> tags (see here for details).

    I have many times read discussion boards where people said something like "I started writing my thesis in Microsoft Word using its equation editor. After my fourth bout of heavy drinking and depression, my friend showed me LaTeX, and I was able to finish my thesis with just a few wine coolers and hardly any Prozac."

    steveha

    --
    lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
  11. Re:WTF by Profane+MuthaFucka · · Score: 5, Funny

    I know, WTF indeed. This iTEX is even going to have TrueType fonts! And he rewrote it in Java. Knuth has really gone soft in his old age.

    --
    Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
  12. Re:Perspective vs. Tunnel Vision by Bluesman · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I did my thesis in LaTeX; in fact I learned LaTeX to do the thesis so I wouldn't have to use MS Word. I probably didn't save any time since I was starting from scratch with LaTeX and had to update the school's age-old LaTeX template to work with the newer versions, but man, when I saw everyone else struggling with Word and whatever awful math plugin they had to use, I was glad I took the extra time.

    Now I use LaTeX whenever I can since the output is so beautiful and I can type lists and tables a lot faster than I can mouse them in in Word.

    I highly recommend it.

    --
    If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
  13. Knuthing to see here by CrazyJim1 · · Score: 4, Funny

    please move along

  14. Re:Perspective vs. Tunnel Vision by Bluesman · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Lyx is cool, but I like LaTeX by hand because it's just faster. Anything repetitive I write my own definitions (i.e. macros) for, so it's a huge time saver.

    I really dislike WYSIWYG. I want to type, never use a mouse, and have the program format it for me.

    --
    If moderation could change anything, it would be illegal.
  15. Re:Perspective vs. Tunnel Vision by drosboro · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I did my thesis in LaTeX - and I don't believe there was a single mathematical equation in it. I chose to use it so that I could focus on the structure of the document, rather than formatting. There's lots of good things about it beyond just math!

    Of course, I may have been the only person in the Faculty of Education at my university ever to use LaTeX for their thesis - at least outside of the math education folks. I had to use a LaTeX style from our computer science department - only CS, physics, and math seem to have LaTeX thesis styles at my school.

  16. Re:Perspective vs. Tunnel Vision by Abcd1234 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Now I use LaTeX whenever I can since the output is so beautiful and I can type lists and tables a lot faster than I can mouse them in in Word.

    And, as a bonus, it's actually amenable to version control. Nothing like being able to throw a document into cvs/svn/git/what-have-you, and have real, sensible diffs to tell you how the document changed over time, without resorting to storing all that version info in the damn document format itself where it can't be accessed by anything but specialized software designed to work with that format.