Re: LaTeX / Metafont was Re: Arabic transliteration

En réponse à Peter Clark <peter-clark@...>:

>         What??? Are you saying that LaTeX is NOT the end-all, be-all of
> document
> processing? Blasphemy!
Of course not! But that it's the panacea doesn't mean it's an *editor* ;))) .
It's a descriptive language, that's something different :)) .

>         While technically you are correct (it is not an editor), that's
> beside the
> point--you can use any text editor (nano, vi, notepad, even *shudder*
> emacs)
> and produce vertical text with it.
But once compiled, will the DVI show vertical text? The only package I see on
my installation with vertical text abilities is MonTeX, and it's far from
complete...

> >
> > Well, IMVHO, Metafont *is* a genial way to create fonts!
>         Swell, thanks for volunteering to help me with my fonts. ;>
>
As long as I don't have to program the fonts myself :))) .

>         Comforting. The last time I did Cartesian geometry was eight
> years ago.
Easy to take up again. Do you play chess or checkers? Do you know at least what
a board of chess is? Then you know Cartesian geometry :)) . The rest of
Cartesian geometry is pure paraphrase on that.

> (Hmm--second time Descartes has been mentioned on this list in a
> week--distrubing...)
>
LOL. Yep, this man is never very far. Trust the French to be omnipresent ;)))) .

>         That is good news indeed, since the two scripts (both the
> vertical "vine"
> script and the horizontal "Greek" script, so named not because it was
> based
> on Greek but because it was horizontal, which naturally made the
> people
> think, "Ah-ha! Greek style!") are written in such a style.
>
Well, then it's just a matter of choosing point coordinates and let the pen go
through them :)) .

>         I read the book and went, "Huh?" I'm more the type that learns
> from
> example
The METAFONT Book is also a tutorial (it contains a lot of examples and
exercises, which I consider quite well done. Knuth is one of those authors who
actually try to make things easy for their readers).

> Is it the same as the one at
> http://www.math.uni-hamburg.de/home/ammann/tex/tetex/doc/knuth/mfbook.dvi?
Yep, except that I have the figures too :)) (OK, in a separate file, but it's
better than nothing :)) ).

>         Hmm--maybe we should start a separate mailing list: "LaTeX and
> Friends for
> Conlangers." Let's see, H.S. Teoh has also been threatening to create a
> MF
> font, anybody else?
I'm threatening to create a MF font for Maggel (as well as a TTF and Postcript
font afterwards :)) ). It may be a good idea to make a separate list of LaTeX
for conlangers, as the technical discussions on (La)TeX are probably boring for
half (and I'm quite optimistic there ;)) ) the people on Conlang...

Christophe.

http://rainbow.conlang.free.fr

Take your life as a movie: do not let anybody else play the leading role.

Reply