Tag Archives: TeX

Microsoft buys GitHub?

Posted on 06/06/2018 by

Some years ago, it was announced that Microsoft had done a deal with Donald Knuth and the American Mathematical Society and had bought the rights to TeX. It was slightly worrying until you noticed that the announcement was dated 1 … Continue reading →

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Hermann Zapf

Posted on 11/06/2015 by

I learned from today’s Guardian that the type designer Hermann Zapf died last week at the age of 96. The journalist focussed his article on Zapf’s revolutionary Dingbats font, but for me and other TeX users, his great contribution was … Continue reading →

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Computer blues

Posted on 06/05/2015 by

No, not a grumble: a story with a happy ending. Back in 2008, when the Asus eee-pc notebook came out, I got one of the first. I have written elsewhere about how it was indispensible on my Forder tour of … Continue reading →

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Computers

Posted on 05/08/2014 by

Love them or hate them, most of us do both. Yesterday, in this short period of calm between academic trips, I decided to upgrade my laptop from Ubuntu 12.04LTS (“Precise Pangolin”) to Ubuntu 14.04LTS (“Trusty Tahr”). The LTS stands for … Continue reading →

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Generation, t-designs and other mathematical notation

Posted on 26/03/2014 by

Donald Knuth, a mathematician (his adviser was Marshall Hall, his thesis on algebraic structures related to projective planes) turned computer scientist, became dissatisfied with typesetting while producing his multi-volume The Art of Computer Programming. So he took time off to … Continue reading →

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Knuth on typesetting

Posted on 01/11/2012 by

Social media is ephemeral; mathematics has a surprising permanence. Where does that leave mathematics blogs? Looking at the viewing statistics, it is clear that some of my posts really are ephemeral: a post on my summer holiday has had just … Continue reading →

Posted in typography | Tagged , | 7 Comments