How does one yawn into the abyss knowing that Dr Knuth himself produced "MULTIPLE errors" in writing code to ... draw a dot.
MetaPost is not by Knuth, it is based on his own (presumably correct) code from Metafont.
Note from Don Knuth – bug(s) in MetaPost?
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Re: Note from Don Knuth – bug(s) in MetaPost?
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Email is a wonderful thing for people whose role in life is to be on top of things. But not for me; my role is to be on the bottom of things." So I think we all read that and think we want to be a bit more like Don Knuth, eh? I've met Dr Knuth a couple of times. He's a lovely man, rather modest and just a little nervous. There are some in the industry I've met who know of their infamy and carry it less well. Last ti…
Surely you mean "fame" and not "infamy".
He is not merely "famous", he is "in-famous". ;)
Re: Note from Don Knuth – bug(s) in MetaPost?
#13> I ran this with newly installed MacTeX from the TeX Collection 2013.
Then this:
>Unfortunately the Ubuntu engine that converts PostScript to my
So Mr. Knuth's using a Macbook and Ubuntu at the same time.
Re: Note from Don Knuth – bug(s) in MetaPost?
#14> I ran this with newly installed MacTeX from the TeX Collection 2013. Then this: >Unfortunately the Ubuntu engine that converts PostScript to my So Mr. Knuth's using a Macbook and Ubuntu at the same time.
Yup—he's spoken about it[1]:
> I currently use Ubuntu Linux, on a standalone laptop—it has no Internet connection. I occasionally carry flash memory drives between this machine and the Macs that I use for network surfing and graphics; but I trust my family jewels only to Linux. Incidentally, with Linux I much prefer the keyboard focus that I can get with classic FVWM to the GNOME and KDE environments that other people seem to like better. To each their own.
[1]: http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1193856
Re: Note from Don Knuth – bug(s) in MetaPost?
#15OK, so Dr. Knuth is alive and well, and reporting a bug. Is there more to this that I'm not seeing?
MetaFont and TeX are both known for being bug-free because Knuth offered cash rewards for finding them—famously, he no longer does this because he had issues with people not cashing his checks. So it's highly unusual to find bugs, and is generally considered newsworthy these days.
EDIT: MetaPost -> MetaFont
Re: Note from Don Knuth – bug(s) in MetaPost?
#16OK, so Dr. Knuth is alive and well, and reporting a bug. Is there more to this that I'm not seeing?
MetaFont and TeX are both known for being bug-free because Knuth offered cash rewards for finding them—famously, he no longer does this because he had issues with people not cashing his checks. So it's highly unusual to find bugs, and is generally considered newsworthy these days. EDIT: MetaPost -> MetaFont
I think you meant MetaFont.
Re: Note from Don Knuth – bug(s) in MetaPost?
#17OK, so Dr. Knuth is alive and well, and reporting a bug. Is there more to this that I'm not seeing?
MetaFont and TeX are both known for being bug-free because Knuth offered cash rewards for finding them—famously, he no longer does this because he had issues with people not cashing his checks. So it's highly unusual to find bugs, and is generally considered newsworthy these days. EDIT: MetaPost -> MetaFont
> he no longer does this because he had issues with people not cashing his checks.
Slight correction - he had issues with people attacking his checking accounts: http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/news08.html