Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!pacbell.com!ucsd!nosc!dog.ee.lbl.gov!csa1.lbl.gov!jtchew From: jtchew@csa1.lbl.gov (JOSEPH T CHEW) Newsgroups: comp.text.tex Subject: Re: TeX = as seen by a reviewer of the NeXT cube Message-ID: <14284@dog.ee.lbl.gov> Date: 14 Jun 91 18:36:02 GMT References: <1991Jun13.004311.27226@zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu> <1991Jun13.063513.3050@math.ucla.edu> Reply-To: jtchew@csa1.lbl.gov Followup-To: comp.sys.next Organization: Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory - Berkeley, CA, USA Lines: 33 News-Software: VAX/VMS VNEWS 1.3-4 X-Local-Date: Fri, 14 Jun 91 10:38:43 PDT >>document processing for real men. Incredibly rich and capable. Also >>incredibly difficult. >Anyone who thinks it is pronounced "teks" should not be taken too >seriously. Knuth, in "TeX and Metafont: New Directions in Typesetting" (American Mathematical Society and Digital Press, 1979, p. 4), has this to say: <1> The name of the game English words like "technology" stem from a Greek root beginning with the letters {tau, epsilon, chi}... and this same Greek word means art as well as technology. Hence the name TEX, which is an upper- case form of {tau, epsilon, chi}. Insiders pronounce the {chi} of TEX as a Greek chi, not as an "x," so that TEX rimes with blecchhh. It's the "ch" sound in Scottish words like loch or German words like ach; it's a Spanish "j" and a Russian "kh." When you say it properly to your computer, the terminal may become slightly moist. On the other hand, you might find it more comfortable to pronounce TEX as a Texan would and to shrug off all this high-falutin' nonsense about beauty and quality. Go ahead and do what you want; your computer won't mind. So wrote its inventor on the lone prairie of Palo Alto. Yippie ki-yo ki-yay. --Joe "Just another personal opinion from the People's Republic of Berkeley"