From Newsgroup: comp.text.tex

1 IN the beginning Donald E. Knuth created TeX and METAFONT.

2 And the world of letters was without order, and void;
and the pages were filled with crooked spacing and poor kerning.

3 And the Spirit of DEK moved upon the face of the manuscripts.

4 And DEK said, Let there be typesetting with precision surpassing
the craft of men: and it was so.

5 And DEK saw the line-breaking, that it was good: and he divided
the words with the algorithm of goodly paragraph shapes.

6 -| And DEK made \def, whereby a scribe might declare a new command,
binding tokens to expansion according to the will of the author.

7 And \def was the first covenant of macro-making, and it came to
pass that men used also \edef, and \gdef, and \xdef, each according
unto their manner: \edef to expand with zeal, \gdef to make the
decree endure unto all groups, and \xdef to do both mightily.

8 And DEK gave unto them \expandafter, that the order of
expansion might be altered, and \noexpand, that a token might
be spared from expansion in the time of expansion.

9 And it came to pass that there was also \the, which brought
forth the value of registers; and \csname, which created the
name of a command from letters gathered at run-time, and so
made dynamic the word of TeX.

10 And he ordained boxes: \hbox for the setting of words in one line,
and \vbox for the stacking of lines; and he spake also of glue and
kerns, and of leaders that march across the width of the page.

11 -| And DEK created the math mode, wherein letters and symbols
abide in rule and harmony, with \over for fractions, \sqrt for
roots, and \mathchardef for the binding of symbols to numbers.

12 And he made \halign, that tables might be set well; and \parshape,
that the edges of paragraphs might follow strange and wondrous forms.

13 And DEK saw that the letters were fair, but the shapes of
fonts were wanting in order, for in those days the casting
of metal gave way to raster displays.

14 Therefore he made METAFONT, to describe glyphs not by mere
images but by the measures of pens and strokes.

15 -| And in METAFONT he caused the command beginchar to be the dawn
of each letter; and endchar to be its setting into the font.

16 And there was penstroke, that a path might be clothed with
the thickness of a penrCOs shape; and there were cycles and
tensions, controls and directions, whereby the scribe could
bid the curve bend thus and not otherwise.

17 And a glyph in METAFONT was not fixed, but brought to
life by variables: x1..x7, y1..y7, points upon the plain,
each obeying equations and constraints.

18 And DEK made pickup, that a pen might be taken up for use;
and draw, that a path might be made visible; and fill, that
a region might be covered in black.

19 And he separated the modes: proof mode to render at high
resolution upon the scroll, and lowres mode for raster to
be made into bitmaps for ancient printers.

20 -| And DEK set forth the TeX and METAFONT ecosystem, and the
scribes multiplied it.

21 And from TeX came plain TeX, and in later days LaTeX was
made by Lamport, bringing document classes and environments,
whereby authors might declare \section and \tableofcontents,
and need not dwell upon lengths and boxes.

22 And in the generations thereafter, was born pdfTeX,
which brought forth PDF directly from TeX, with support for
micro-typography, protrusion, and expansion of glyphs.

23 Then rose XeTeX, that knew the tongues of Unicode and could call
upon system fonts; and LuaTeX, that gave unto the scribe the Lua
language, whereby he might script and alter the engine at will.

24 And the faithful made expl3, the foundation of LaTeX,
with tokens of the form \tl_set:Nn, \seq_map_inline:Nn, and
\prop_get:NnN; and there was a syntax of colons and underscores,
for the ordering of names and arguments.

25 -| And packages were made in abundance: TikZ for the drawing
of diagrams, siunitx for the rendering of numbers and units,
fontspec to bind system fonts in XeTeX and LuaTeX, hyperref for
the making of links, and polyglossia to speak in many tongues.

26 And the scribes laboured with babel, cleveref, amsmath,
and mathtools, each after its own manner, that the documents
might be fair and rightly spaced.

27 And the kingdom of fonts increased also: OpenType and TrueType
were tamed; virtual fonts were devised; and encodings such as
OT1, T1, and TU ordered the mapping from characters to glyphs.

28 -| And the house of METAFONT begat METAPOST, which output not
bitmaps but vector drawings, and it was joined unto scripting
for diagrams in the style of Knuth.

29 And lo, the earth was filled with typeset works of clarity
and stability, for TeX's outputs changed not between the days,
but endured, and the engines of DEK were as a rock in the
shifting sands of technology.

30 And the scholars beheld the work of DEK, and it was very good.


--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.text.tex

Beautiful. Love it :)
-----Original Message-----
From: Stefan Ram <ram@zedat.fu-berlin.de>
Subject: TeX and METAFONT
Date: 08/14/2025 03:28:22 AM
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
-a 1 IN the beginning Donald E. Knuth created TeX and METAFONT.
-a 2 And the world of letters was without order, and void;
-a-a and the pages were filled with crooked spacing and poor kerning.
-a 3 And the Spirit of DEK moved upon the face of the manuscripts.
-a 4 And DEK said, Let there be typesetting with precision surpassing
-a the craft of men: and it was so.
-a 5 And DEK saw the line-breaking, that it was good: and he divided
-a the words with the algorithm of goodly paragraph shapes.
-a 6 -| And DEK made \def, whereby a scribe might declare a new command,
-a binding tokens to expansion according to the will of the author.
-a 7 And \def was the first covenant of macro-making, and it came to
-a pass that men used also \edef, and \gdef, and \xdef, each according
-a unto their manner: \edef to expand with zeal, \gdef to make the
-a decree endure unto all groups, and \xdef to do both mightily.
-a 8 And DEK gave unto them \expandafter, that the order of
-a expansion might be altered, and \noexpand, that a token might
-a be spared from expansion in the time of expansion.
-a 9 And it came to pass that there was also \the, which brought
-a forth the value of registers; and \csname, which created the
-a name of a command from letters gathered at run-time, and so
-a made dynamic the word of TeX.
-a 10 And he ordained boxes: \hbox for the setting of words in one line,
-a and \vbox for the stacking of lines; and he spake also of glue and
-a kerns, and of leaders that march across the width of the page.
-a 11 -| And DEK created the math mode, wherein letters and symbols
-a abide in rule and harmony, with \over for fractions, \sqrt for
-a roots, and \mathchardef for the binding of symbols to numbers.
-a 12 And he made \halign, that tables might be set well; and \parshape,
-a that the edges of paragraphs might follow strange and wondrous forms.
-a 13 And DEK saw that the letters were fair, but the shapes of
-a fonts were wanting in order, for in those days the casting
-a of metal gave way to raster displays.
-a 14 Therefore he made METAFONT, to describe glyphs not by mere
-a images but by the measures of pens and strokes.
-a 15 -| And in METAFONT he caused the command beginchar to be the dawn
-a of each letter; and endchar to be its setting into the font.
-a 16 And there was penstroke, that a path might be clothed with
-a the thickness of a penrCOs shape; and there were cycles and
-a tensions, controls and directions, whereby the scribe could
-a bid the curve bend thus and not otherwise.
-a 17 And a glyph in METAFONT was not fixed, but brought to
-a life by variables: x1..x7, y1..y7, points upon the plain,
-a each obeying equations and constraints.
-a 18 And DEK made pickup, that a pen might be taken up for use;
-a and draw, that a path might be made visible; and fill, that
-a a region might be covered in black.
-a 19 And he separated the modes: proof mode to render at high
-a resolution upon the scroll, and lowres mode for raster to
-a be made into bitmaps for ancient printers.
-a 20 -| And DEK set forth the TeX and METAFONT ecosystem, and the
-a scribes multiplied it.
-a 21 And from TeX came plain TeX, and in later days LaTeX was
-a made by Lamport, bringing document classes and environments,
-a whereby authors might declare \section and \tableofcontents,
-a and need not dwell upon lengths and boxes.
-a 22 And in the generations thereafter, was born pdfTeX,
-a which brought forth PDF directly from TeX, with support for
-a micro-typography, protrusion, and expansion of glyphs.
-a 23 Then rose XeTeX, that knew the tongues of Unicode and could call
-a upon system fonts; and LuaTeX, that gave unto the scribe the Lua
-a language, whereby he might script and alter the engine at will.
-a 24 And the faithful made expl3, the foundation of LaTeX,
-a with tokens of the form \tl_set:Nn, \seq_map_inline:Nn, and
-a \prop_get:NnN; and there was a syntax of colons and underscores,
-a for the ordering of names and arguments.
-a 25 -| And packages were made in abundance: TikZ for the drawing
-a of diagrams, siunitx for the rendering of numbers and units,
-a fontspec to bind system fonts in XeTeX and LuaTeX, hyperref for
-a the making of links, and polyglossia to speak in many tongues.
-a 26 And the scribes laboured with babel, cleveref, amsmath,
-a and mathtools, each after its own manner, that the documents
-a might be fair and rightly spaced.
-a 27 And the kingdom of fonts increased also: OpenType and TrueType
-a were tamed; virtual fonts were devised; and encodings such as
-a OT1, T1, and TU ordered the mapping from characters to glyphs.
-a 28 -| And the house of METAFONT begat METAPOST, which output not
-a bitmaps but vector drawings, and it was joined unto scripting
-a for diagrams in the style of Knuth.
-a 29 And lo, the earth was filled with typeset works of clarity
-a and stability, for TeX's outputs changed not between the days,
-a but endured, and the engines of DEK were as a rock in the
-a shifting sands of technology.
-a 30 And the scholars beheld the work of DEK, and it was very good.
--- Synchronet 3.21a-Linux NewsLink 1.2