What on earth is iTeX?

Question

Is that an hoax?

Or is it a real wish from D. Knuth?

(http://river-valley.zeeba.tv/media/conferences/tug-2010/Don-Knuth)

The proposal is based on a number of claims which might make sense for some commercial mogul to make, but which are absolutely outlandish coming from Knuth: claims that he's a lousy programmer, claims that no-one should trust anything more than 30 months old, claims that they have anticipated all of the possible wishes of the user, etc. This coming from a man who wrote TeX in the first place, and the author of the modern epic saga The Art Of Computer Programming. After 20 minutes or so, it is extremely obvious that it's a hoax. — Niel de Beaudrap, May 26 '11 at 09:12
@Harald: no, I pulled that number out of may hat. Even before he got to the name eee-TECKS <bell ringing> there was a rather implausible list of features. It could be that even his remarks on 0.4pt = 0.39999pt could have been a tip-off if I knew enough TeX-lore, but just at the very beginning it was not obvious. — Niel de Beaudrap, May 26 '11 at 12:38
@Niel: That should teach you not to pull numbers out of a hat. Yeah, I admit it took me a while to catch on too, but my numbers will remain in the hat. — Harald Hanche-Olsen, May 26 '11 at 20:20
@Harald: well, I said that it was extremely obvious after 20. I didn't say that it was totally unobvious prior to the 19.5 minute mark. My mistake for being imprecise, I suppose. — Niel de Beaudrap, May 26 '11 at 23:38

score 35 · Accepted Answer · answered May 26 '11 at 09:03

35

It is a joke. Knuth is known for his "professional humor", see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Knuth#Humor.

answered May 26 '11 at 09:03

Martin Scharrer

262,582

He is hilarious XD I was laughing all the way through XD – dingo_d May 27 '11 at 16:09
10

"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it." – Martin Scharrer Jul 20 '11 at 00:06

score 18 · Answer 2 · 2017-01-03T20:02:04.283

18

All i components of Apple are presented in San Francisco, where also the last TUG meeting (32 years of TeX) was held. This was the reason why Knuth introduced the iTeX in his talk with an audio visuell logo ... It was a joke ...

edited Jan 03 '17 at 20:02

answered May 26 '11 at 09:16

8

And let's not forget that the bell ringing is also part of the iTeX logo! =) – Paulo Cereda May 26 '11 at 09:57
4

That is the audio part of the label. – May 26 '11 at 10:01
Oh sorry, I got it now. =) – Paulo Cereda May 26 '11 at 10:37
3

don't forget the 3d logo-embossed glass bowl part, all set in a hyperbolic plane, where the geometry allows you to put as much content as you want as close together as you want... – propaganda Jan 14 '12 at 01:33

score 16 · Answer 3 · answered Jul 24 '11 at 09:49

It's worth documenting that there is another, non-joke, iTeX.

WebTeX was a restricted subset of LaTeX that was designed for rendering as webpages, offering a more sophisticated layout model than CSS. Paul Gartside took a subset of that focussed on rendering mathematics, called it iTeX, and wrote a converter to MathML, which he called itex2mml.

Jacques Distler is currently maintaining itex2mml, and provides documentation of the iTeX language and the itex2mml utility.

score 7 · Answer 4 · edited Feb 19 '12 at 23:08

7

Well, there is another non-joke iTeX, an iPad reader for documents prepared with TeX/LaTeX. It's in the iTunes app store, and you can read about it at http://itex.cheswick.com or see my presentation on it at the same conference as Knuth's i(whistle)TeX, but I beat him by two days.

edited Feb 19 '12 at 23:08

Werner

603,163

answered Feb 19 '12 at 22:47

Bill Cheswick

231

Welcome to TeX.sx! You don't have to sign with your name since it automatically appears in the lower right corner of your post. – Werner Feb 19 '12 at 23:09
While it's usually fine to promote one's own products or developments on tex.sx, you should be a little more clear that it's your project. – doncherry Feb 19 '12 at 23:28
1

Sorry. I thought the link would suffice, without an excess of self-trumpeting. – Bill Cheswick Feb 20 '12 at 14:16

score 3 · Answer 5 · answered May 26 '11 at 09:01

3

I think it's a bit late april's fools :)

answered May 26 '11 at 09:01

Helios

653

What on earth is iTeX?

5 Answers5

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