Customer Reviews

Computers & Typesetting, Volume D: Metafont: The Program

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Seven years after his 1979 book "TEX and METAFONT", at the start of a revolution leading to ubiquitous desktop publishing (first Macintosh in 1984), Knuth published a set of five books on TEX, METAFONT, and typefaces.

His purpose as teacher was to show a new way to write and document computer programs -- "literate" programming. In these volumes Knuth published two sizeable PASCAL applications for computerized typesetting and -- as a byproduct -- invented a documentation tool, CWEB, that both preserves the textual accuracy of the source code and improves programmer comprehension for debugging and maintenance purposes.

The peer review process implied by Knuth's demonstration, his careful attention to the tiniest details, and his gift of the source code to the public domain are all foundations of today's open source community.

This is hardly an introductory text on programming and very few of us read computer programs for fun. That said, a programmer with some experience could learn a great deal by thorough study and imitation of the master craftsmen (don't forget about John D. Hobby) at work here.

MF: The Program is a surprisingly readable batch of source code (at least partially co-written by John Hobby, by the way). Yes, you can reproduce (almost) the book from the source code (and get a printout that includes post-publication bugs fixes and enhancements), but it's not quite as convenient and lacks the page-by-page mini-indices. Whether the convenience is worth [the money] is up to you.

Where the book is especially helpful is for someone who's looking to see graphical algorithims spelled out by a master programmer in a literate and enteratining way. Me, I've got the full 5 volume set of TeX/MF books, but then, once upon a time, this was how I made my living.