Re: The TeXbook, appdx. C, p. 369, character sets

Dennis <nospampls@xxxxxxxx> writes:
In his TeXbook Knuth says on page 369:

``It is recommended that TeX implementations on systems with large
character sets be consistent with the following codes:''

But---taking a look at the following character table---what does he mean?
Why are there characters like a `cdot', a down-arrow, etc. in the character
positions ''00 through ''1F instead of the ASCII control characters in the
chapter's first table?

the chapter on encoding is best left for a period late at night, when
you're very, very, drunk.

unless, that is, you're one of those people who think standards-
writers should get a life, and stop telling other people what to do.

i suspect that ascii didn't actually exist, at the time knuth was
first designing tex (the first version of tex seems very weird to the
eyes of one who's used current tex.

there was probably a coding convention, but not actually a standard; i
don't recall -- we tended to work with odd codes on our machines over
here.

but then, why would knuth _want_ to represent ascii control
characters? -- he already had a macro language with which to do those
control functions.

Knuth tells us, that he likes to use the `not-equal', `less-or-equal'
keys on his special keyboard. Can one adopt his linux system, so that
he can access these symbols on his keyboard?

hahahaha

knuth was talking about a tops-20 system with a keyboard specially
designed for stanford. the tops-20 system has sadly gone, but no-one
regrets that the keyboards have disappeared into the dustbin of history.

just forget about his talk of keyboards. everyone else manages with
their national keyboards (even don does, now).

indeed, it's best (as far as possible) to forget about the font
encodings that knuth designed, too. they were arranged to allow the
early tex processors, running on machines whose memory would be
dwarfed by the smallest dimm you can buy today, and with discs which
were reputed to be so massive that their rotational energy would mean
they wouldn't move when the next earthquake came. (i got a disc for
my research, in 1969, which offered a stunning 1mbyte/side. it had a
head per track, so was by the standards of the time rather fast, but
capacity wasn't its strong point.)

I am quite unfamilliar with chacarter encodings and stuff. So,
I'd be fairly happy to receive some hint where to start my journey
to the solution ...

it's sometimes a bit tricky, but the best bet is to ignore knuth's
views on fonts. even knuth uses unicode, nowadays. (though,
characteristically, aiui he only switches to unicode input for names
he can't represent otherwise.)

he's a great man, and his mathematics and his typesetting aspirations
have given us enormous benefits. don't be sidelined into his computer
archaeology.
--
Robin Fairbairns, Cambridge
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: The TeXbook, appdx. C, p. 369, character sets
    ... ``It is recommended that TeX implementations on systems with large ... Why are there characters like a `cdot', a down-arrow, etc. in the character ... the chapter on encoding is best left for a period late at night, ... Knuth has stated quite definitely (I just ...
    (comp.text.tex)
  • Re: Musings on a holiday weekend
    ... This was the last year of the governorship of the then governor whatever. ... The keyboard would have enough memory to ... so the mix of characters ... control keys to select the keymap you need. ...
    (bit.listserv.ibm-main)
  • RE: Musings on a holiday weekend
    ... I've been toying with ideas around the future of z/OS (if there is such ... The keyboard would have enough memory to ... so the mix of characters ... control keys to select the keymap you need. ...
    (bit.listserv.ibm-main)
  • Re: suggestions for new module name
    ... Several metrics of effort are used. ... > This module is useful for determining which keyboard layout is more ... That means that accented characters, unicode, etc. are not ...
    (comp.lang.perl.modules)
  • Re: special characters, ie spanish accents
    ... If you do a web search on keyboard layouts and go to the ... characters instead of 30 is a different matter. ... There is also an English International layout that gives you many of the ... dead keys and you still see the original layout for English keyboards. ...
    (freebsd-questions)
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