On Monday, October 4, 2004, at 02:18 PM, Andre Poenitz wrote:
On Thu, Sep 30, 2004 at 09:52:50AM +0200, mario wrote:some time ago, I was looking for - and could't find - a decent
self-contained (possibly, on-line) tutorial on how TeX works. I mean, an
explanation on how the underlying algorith work, which is the basic
design, what are the main components.
Is there anything simpler that the original Knuth books?
None that I know about.
It's even worse than that. If you really want to see all the corner cases you need to look at the TeX sources. Knuth himself admits in the TeXBook that he isn't always telling the exact truth in the book. And believe me, he indeed isn't...
However, the TeXBook gives you a pretty good idea on the rough working
of TeX's interna. And possibly some impressions of the fine line between
genius and insanity...
There is a kind of interesting document which is a literate weaving the source for the Plain TeX format with appropriate sections of the TeXbook --- not sure if it'd be helpful or no. I've always been faintly surprised DEK didn't anoint it as the one true source for plain.tex
Found it once as a .dvi --- can't recall the details of where though...
William
-- William Adams, publishing specialist voice - 717-731-6707 | Fax - 717-731-6708 www.atlis.com
