TeX /tekh/ n. An extremely powerful {macro}-based text formatter
written by Donald E. {Knuth}, very popular in the computer-science
community (it is good enough to have displaced Unix {{troff}}, the other
favored formatter, even at many Unix installations). TeX fans insist on
the correct (guttural) pronunciation, and the correct spelling (all
caps, squished together, with the E depressed below the baseline; the
mixed-case `TeX' is considered an acceptable kluge on ASCII-only
devices). Fans like to proliferate names from the word `TeX' -- such as
TeXnician (TeX user), TeXhacker (TeX programmer), TeXmaster (competent
TeX programmer), TeXhax, and TeXnique. See also {CrApTeX}.
Knuth began TeX because he had become annoyed at the declining quality
of the typesetting in volumes I-III of his monumental "Art of Computer
Programming" (see {Knuth}, also {bible}). In a manifestation of the
typical hackish urge to solve the problem at hand once and for all, he
began to design his own typesetting language. He thought he would finish
it on his sabbatical in 1978; he was wrong by only about 8 years. The
language was finally frozen around 1985, but volume IV of "The Art of
Computer Programming" is not expected to appear until 2002. The impact
and influence of TeX's design has been such that nobody minds this very
much. Many grand hackish projects have started as a bit of
{toolsmith}ing on the way to something else; Knuth's diversion was
simply on a grander scale than most.
TeX has also been a noteworthy example of free, shared, but
high-quality software. Knuth offers a monetary awards to anyone who
found and reported bugs dating from before the 1989 code freeze; as the
years wore on and the few remaining bugs were fixed (and new ones even
harder to find), the bribe went up. Though well-written, TeX is so large
(and so full of cutting edge technique) that it is said to have
unearthed at least one bug in every Pascal system it has been compiled
with.
Source: The Jargon File
