TeX typesetting

Hey geeks (I mean that endearingly):

http://www.pragma-ade.com/pdftex/thesis.pdf

Lately I've been reading "Micro-typographic extensions
to the TeX typesetting system" by Mr. H`an Th=88e=B4
Th`anh (sorry about how ugly that no doubt looks, with
all the poorly spaced diacritcal marks. Incidentally,
I heard that the original 7-bit ASCII didn't allow
enough room for the encoding of such marks at all,
making it difficult to use for any language except for
plain old AmerEnglish. Interestingly, our barcode
system is about to gets its ass kicked and replaced by
the EU standard for similarly ethnocentric reasons.)

In any event, I highly recommend this paper to anyone
interested in typography or digital typesetting, or
indeed to anyone who thinks that "typesetting" is the
same as "typing".=20

Some of the more "TeXie" stuff (pun intended; sorry)
was a bit over my head, particularly the equations
used by TeX to determine line breaks and the like. I
also imagine that margin kerning will seem arcane to a
lot of people. But just look at the examples, and how
much nicer it looks to shift the commas and hyphens
just slightly into the margin, and you'll get the
idea. What I found most fascinating about the paper is
the idea is the concept of font expansion and
substitution (ie, cmr12+20, which, if I understand it
correctly, is Computer Modern Roman 12 Point expanded
by a 20/1000 of an em). This is fascinating not
because it represents advanced computing (it seems as
though conditional replacement is old hat for computer
systems) but because the trick is ripped off from
Gutenberg's 42-line Bible (which is credited as being
the first work produced with movable type; this is not
to be confused with the block printing that was
pioneered in Asia much earlier).   =20

The same directory that contains the dissertation also
contains Th`anh's documentation for pdfTeX. I have yet
to read it, but it is well designed and I have to give
him credit for putting the mark-up for the text on the
cover. I have no idea what any of it means, but I bet
David does.=20

-J.





	=09
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