Talk:TeX

The pronunciation help is wrong. please cf. http://www.ling.hf.ntnu.no/ipa/full/ipachart_cons_pulm_fbmp3.html TeX derives from Greek technê and that is NOT pronounced with an IPA [x] or ['chi'] but with the fortis palatal fricative - IPA ["c with a diacritical ' at its bottom"]. So TeX is not pronounced like 'loch' or GER 'Bach' but like GER 'mich' or GER 'Technik'.

What do people think of adding a picture that illustrates the "spelling" of TeX, similar to the one at the beginning of the LaTeX article? –Matt 09:56, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

I like the lion better :) Pity the thumbnailer makes it so faint... anyone know how to manipulate the original to fix that? Lupin 10:43, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

You could simply ask the copyright holder of the image (Oneiros). It would have been nice if I'd been asked before the inclusion of the image here anyway. :-( -- Oneiros 13:57, 2005 Apr 6 (UTC)

Knuth writes in the TeXbook: "It's the `ch' sound in Scottish words like loch or German words like ach; it's a Spanish `j' and a Russian `kh'." I understand this as a clear description of [x], not [ç]. Perhaps Knuth belongs to the 99% majority of people who never heard about palatalization in Greek. -- EJ 13:50, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Update: I just checked The Details of Modern Greek Phonetics and Phonology. Although it discusses Greek palatalization in depth, it nowhere suggests that consonants are palatalized after a front vowel, or when separated from the following front vowel by another consonant. Indeed, examples of velars in such a position show them unpalatalized: έχω [`εいぷしろんxo], γεγονός [ʝεいぷしろんγがんまon`os], λίγο [ʎ`iγがんまo], γυναίκα [ʝin`εいぷしろんka], προσεκτικά [prosεいぷしろんktik`a], κλείνω [kʎ`ino]. Thus, AFAICS, there is not a single reason why TeX should be pronounced with [ç]. Can someone who is both native Greek and a trained phonetician confirm that τたうεいぷしろんχかいνにゅーηいーた is pronounced [tεいぷしろんxɲi]? -- EJ 15:34, 24 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Surely the question is not how it might be pronounced in Modern Greek (Ancient Greek would in any case have been different), but how it's pronounced in English, on which Knuth is surely something of an authority. By the way I've converted the spelling guide to IPA, which is the Wikipedia standard, as well as being less ugly to look at adn probably less confusing. rossb 19:56, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I agree. The point was that even if someone disagrees with this viewpoint (such as, apparently, the anonymous first poster), it makes no sense to use an ich-laut.

BTW, I reverted the change you did in the sentence "The name is properly typeset ...", it was wrong. TeX is properly typeset either with a lowered capital "E" (preferred), or normal lowercase "e", but not with lowered lowercase "e". -- EJ 13:34, 1 Mar 2005 (UTC)

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Please avoid using the TeX logo when you cannot print it properly as in HTML. If you want to have the logo, upload a bitmap. – Torsten Bronger 12:18, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Lovely. But it's not a logo, it's the properly formatted form of its name (comme "iTunes", not "ITunes" or "Itunes" or something else). Reinstated.

James F. (talk) 14:34, 18 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Vertical displacement is not part of orthography. Moreover it looks ugly in many browser configurations and inserts an enlarged line skip. All of this is unnecessary. Finally, in his book "Digital Typography" Knuth himself insists on a thorough positioning of the logo letters according to the current typeface. This is obviously not at all possible in HTML. – Torsten Bronger 08:54, 19 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Moreover, the current form in the article is really weird: The last letter seems to have been typed as a Greek letter, but the first two haven't. Anyway, if no real reason against it is given, I'll switch back to the plain version in the article. – Torsten Bronger 23:56, 20 Jul 2004 (UTC)

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I am not too convinced about the section TeX#TeX examples. Do we really want to write this section as a tutorial, with the "hello" code, the details of commands to type to compile the source, etc ? I prefer the way the MetaPost article does it: provide one relatively complex source code, along with the result it produces when compiled. Opinions ? Schutz 01:04, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I think that's a good idea. – Torsten Bronger 17:31, 22 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Seconded. <disclaimer> I wrote MetaPost. 8-) </disclaimer> Maybe two similar short documents, one plain TeX, one LaTeX with the sample output from one or both of them. There are quite a few short example documents around (e.g. Lamport's sample.tex or others from a TeX distribution or off the web) that could be used for inspiration -- preferably giving a single small page (e.g. A5 paper). Not every feature of TeX/LaTeX needs to be included -- just enough to demonstrate the principles and maybe the differences between plain & La. Andrew Kepert 08:23, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I have had a first go at a LaTeX version. It is A4, but 12pt. See User:AndrewKepert/TeX sample Andrew Kepert 10:04, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)