Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!inria!imag!pierre
From: pierre@imag.imag.fr (Pierre LAFORGUE)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Re: TeX pronounciation
Keywords: How, why?
Message-ID: <3420@imag.imag.fr>
Date: 10 Sep 88 10:16:54 GMT
References: <374@polyof.UUCP>
Reply-To: pierre@imag.UUCP (Pierre LAFORGUE)
Organization: IMAG, University of Grenoble, France
Lines: 27

In article <374@polyof.UUCP> paul@polyof.UUCP (A1 Mr. Curran) writes:
>
>	How does one pronounce the term "TeX."  There seem to be two
>factions, one that says it's like TEK and another that says it's TEX
>as in TEXas or TEXt.  If it's TEK howcome it's pronounced that way; I
>can't think of any english words that sound X that way.

Well guessed ! So, it is not an english word, and not even an english
characters word. The letters are the uppercase greek Tau Epsilon Chi.
Most english computer systems are still unable to talk (display, transfer, etc.)
languages other than english. Unix for example makes a bad use of the 8th bit
(except in new SV3.x), some communication equipments want the 8th bit be a
parity one or modify it, ...
Hopefully, the uppercase letters TEX look near english letters.
Of course, all systems are able to write non english languages, for instance
from TEX documents, with a lot of efforts (use of metafont, new hyphenation
systems not based on a dictionnary for languages more cartesian than the
english, problem of the foreign characters bad implemented by ligatures, etc.)
I think Pr Donald Knuth wanted to underline this ability by naming TEX with
greek letters ! Please read the TeX book about that.

>Also it would seem more reasonable to say LATEX than LATEK.  Just curious.

Do you unlike word jokes ? LATEX is the LAmpson's TEX, not a gumtree product.
-- 
Pierre LAFORGUE
pierre@imag.imag.fr      pierre@imag.UUCP      uunet.uu.net!imag!pierre