[author : Donald E. Knuth] #Mathematics #Encoding #Office #Graphics #Book
Extract : « Mathematics books and journals do not look as beautiful as they used to. It is not that their mathematical content is unsatisfactory, rather that the old and well-developed traditions of typesetting have become too expensive. Fortunately, it now appears that mathematics itself can be used to solve this problem.
A first step in the solution is to devise a method for unambiguously specifying mathematical manuscripts in such a way that they can easily be manipulated by machines. Such languages, when properly designed, can be learned quickly by authors and their typists, yet manuscripts in this form will lead directly to high quality plates for the printer with little or no human intervention.
A second step in the solution makes use of classical mathematics to design the shapes of the letters and symbols themselves. It is possible to give a rigorous definition of the exact shape of the letter “a”, for example, in such a way that infinitely many styles (bold, extended, sans-serif, italic, etc.) are obtained from a single definition by changing only a few parameters. When the same is done for the other letters and symbols, we obtain a mathematical definition of type fonts, a definition that can be used on all machines both now and in the future. The main significance of this approach is that new symbols can readily be added in such a way that they are automatically consistent with the old ones.
Of course it is necessary that the mathematically-defined letters be beautiful according to traditional notions of aesthetics. Given a sequence of points in the plane, what is the most pleasing curve that connects them? This question leads to interesting mathematics, and one solution based on a novel family of spline curves has produced excellent fonts of type in the author’s preliminary experiments. We may conclude that a mathematical approach to the design of alphabets does not eliminate the artists who have been doing the job for so many years; on the contrary, it gives them an exciting new medium to work with. [...] »
[author : William W. Moss] #Listing #Assembly #Algorithm #Programming
Extract : « Enclosed is a listing of the program ‘SYMBOL’ which generates alphabetically sorted listings of the symbol table from runs of the Heath H8 assembler. To utilize the program one simply has to run it immediately after a run of the assembler (i.e., before another program writes over the assembler symbol table in memory). The table is then printed out in column order on the console. The symbol values are listed in offset octal format. Hexadecimal format can also be used if desired by substituting the routine ‘HEXOUT’ for ‘OCTOUT’ and changing the code in the ‘PRINT’ routine as shown in the accompanying listing. [...] »
[author : Norman V. Walters] #Algorithm #Listing #Programming
Extract : « This is the concluding segment in a two-part series. [...] »
[author : David E. Raeside] #Finance #Listing #BASIC
Extract : « This computer program will calculate how much initial capital you will need to financially survive a given number of retirement years at a given standard of living. Inflation and a return on invested capital are accounted for. The retirement income is assumed to be made up of two components: a fixed component (a fraction of the initial capital) which is not indexed to the inflation rate and an inflation indexed component (for example, Social Security). [...] »
[author : Martin Bronstein] #Electronic #Keyboard #Programming
Extract : « Loading programs via a microcomputer’s front panel toggle switches is a cumbersome process to say the least. The obvious alternative is to use a keyboard. The keyboard system presented here provides eight bits of hexadecimal data and uses CMOS integrated circuits for low power consumption. Software loader programs are not needed to use this keyboard. Best of all, the system can be built for less than twenty dollars. [...] »