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Don Knuth started the design of TeX in 1978. The first major revison dates back to
1982. The final version is dated 1989, and called TeX version p. Essentially this is
version 3, but because reality has it that even Knuth `makes mistakes' he
allows for adjusted versions denoted by the decimals of p: 3.1, 3.14, 3.141, et
cetera.
It is all a side-step(!) of his magnus opus: The Art of Computer Programming, of
which three volumes have appeared of the envisioned seven. Because of the
rapid development in computer science volume four consists of three books
already.
In designing and developing TeX, Knuth adhered to several software engineering
paradigms like: portability, flexibility, robustness, and not to forget correctness and
documentation. In order to do this gracefully he coined the words literate
programming, and provided en-passant tools for practical use! In fact TeX is a real-life
and significant example of literate programming.
In designing TeX he adopted and developed the following
- boxes, glue and penalties as building blocks
- paragraph-wise searching for line-breaks
- page mapping trough the otr (OutpuT Routine), optimizing for least
penalties
- device-independent output, to be printed, typeset, or viewed, by
independent driver programs
- virtual fonts.
TeX was developed as a side-step. Metafont can be seen as an off-off-spring.
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