abadidea

I have yet to take any note of what this paper (CW AI-related somehow https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/papers/claude-cycles.pdf ) actually says, because I'm too hung up on the fact that Donald Knuth, the man who invented digital typesetting as we know it, has posted a PDF with jaggy text in the year of our lovelace 2026, and I am struck cold with the realization that he has probably been copying the same binary of tex from one machine to the next since 1987.

#typography

Mar 3 at 5:15pmWeb
Show threadrk: it’s hyphen-minus actuallyMar 3

@0xabad1dea

Apropos of nothing, Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore is a quick and pleasant read.

Show threadChris PetrilliMar 3
@0xabad1dea it’s better in the original dvi
Show threadYuki "neige d'aout" Hazuki 膤 ❄️ ​Mar 3
@0xabad1dea Knuth sounds like the kinda programmer once it works for him it's complete and all bugs are features
Show threada wandering happenstanceMar 3
@Yuki @0xabad1dea Literally true, in the sense that the version number for TeX is converging on π while the version of Metafont is converging on e, with the bar for bugfixes going up over time and the official version being frozen at π or e respectively upon Knuth’s death.
Show threadYuki "neige d'aout" Hazuki 膤 ❄️ ​Mar 3
@joXn @0xabad1dea yeah that's exactly what I was thinking
Show threadaskMar 3
@0xabad1dea this PDF was made with a 2023 version of TeX Live (dvipsk). The lack of anti aliasing is because the document is using an embedded bitmap font, so the characters are essentially images. Usually text AA is the responsibility of the reader but it can't do much if you don't give it modern font data.
Show threadTim LavoieMar 3
@ask @0xabad1dea Heck, "modern" is even in the font name! (IIRC, YMMV, etc)
Show threadAaron Sawdey, Ph.D.Mar 3
@0xabad1dea Authentic MetaFont pixels, probably 😎
Show threadfarhaven 🇪🇺Mar 4
@0xabad1dea So crispy!