[tex-implementors] Re: [tex-live] LM as the default outline font?

Frank Küster frank at kuesterei.ch
Wed Mar 30 11:55:02 CEST 2005


Philip TAYLOR <P.Taylor at Rhul.Ac.Uk> wrote:

> If we look at the evolution of TeX82 prior to
> V3, we see that Knuth adopted the following
> version numbers :
>
> 	0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4, 0.5, 0.6, 0.7, 0.8, 0.9,
> 	0.91, 0.92, 0.93, 0.94, 0.95, 0.96, 0.97, 0.98, 0.99,
> 	0.999, 0.9999, 0.99999, 0.999999,
> 	1.0 (I stop at this point)
>
> Now, /if/ Knuth believed that the second element was an
> integer, why did he not use V0.10 after V0.9, then V0.11
> and so on ?
>
> I argue that his numbering unequivocally indicates that
> he was treating version numbers as reals 

Did you notice that the version numbers Knuth chose are unambiguous in
both schemes, that is when you treat them as real numbers as well as
when you treat them as integers?  One could speculate that he tried to
convey the concept of asymptoticity (?) to the human reader, while still
following the machine-readable convention of integer version numbers.

Regards, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster
Inst. f. Biochemie der Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer



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