From nobozo at gmail.com  Fri Mar 15 18:21:14 2019
From: nobozo at gmail.com (Jon Forrest)
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2019 10:21:14 -0700
Subject: [tex-k] Minor Non-Technical Error in TeXbook
Message-ID: <22e9cb4b-8bc5-59f0-3425-9d5326352590@gmail.com>

(This is a minor quibble).

On Page 37 of the TeXbook (2nd printing, 1984) is the sentence

"It's not necessary for you to learn these code numbers;"

This should be

"It's not necessary for you to learn these category numbers;"

This sentence is referring to the display of the 16 character categories
shown above it. The numbers in this display are in a column labeled
"Category" - thus they're category numbers. At this point the word
"code" hasn't been used in this chapter.

An argument against my proposal is that later on in this chapter
the term "category code" is used. To be consistent, this should
be replaced by "category number" everywhere, but that might be
more than you're willing to consider.

Cordially,
Jon Forrest

From karl at freefriends.org  Fri Mar 15 23:52:24 2019
From: karl at freefriends.org (Karl Berry)
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2019 16:52:24 -0600
Subject: [tex-k] Minor Non-Technical Error in TeXbook
In-Reply-To: <22e9cb4b-8bc5-59f0-3425-9d5326352590@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <201903152252.x2FMqOx8012025@freefriends.org>

Hi Jon,

    "It's not necessary for you to learn these category numbers;"

Thanks for the suggestion. I'm not sure Knuth will agree, but it'll be
up to him.

    be replaced by "category number" everywhere, but that might be
    more than you're willing to consider.

Indeed, he certainly will not want to do that :). The terms "category
code" and "catcode" are deeply embedded everywhere in the TeX world; the
"\catcode" primitive, just for starters. --thanks, karl.

From shreevatsa.public at gmail.com  Sat Mar 16 00:24:12 2019
From: shreevatsa.public at gmail.com (Shreevatsa R)
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2019 16:24:12 -0700
Subject: [tex-k] Minor Non-Technical Error in TeXbook
In-Reply-To: <22e9cb4b-8bc5-59f0-3425-9d5326352590@gmail.com>
References: <22e9cb4b-8bc5-59f0-3425-9d5326352590@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <CACB5GbP7toeHJ34esirVsopVYpqG5MKg6Te-UtPpcg2FCq11rQ@mail.gmail.com>

On Fri, 15 Mar 2019 at 13:47, Jon Forrest <nobozo at gmail.com> wrote:

> (This is a minor quibble).
>
> On Page 37 of the TeXbook (2nd printing, 1984) is the sentence
>
> "It's not necessary for you to learn these code numbers;"
>
> This should be
>
> "It's not necessary for you to learn these category numbers;"
>
> This sentence is referring to the display of the 16 character categories
> shown above it. The numbers in this display are in a column labeled
> "Category" - thus they're category numbers. At this point the word
> "code" hasn't been used in this chapter.


Incidentally, in the predecessor of the TeXbook (I have the 1979 "TeX and
METAFONT: New Directions in Typesetting"; there was also an earlier version
of the manual that I don't have access to), in the same place before the
"It's not necessary for you to learn these code numbers" (then page 28 of
Chapter 7 "How TeX reads what you type"), the column is labelled "Category
code", so this quibble would not apply. :-) At some point possibly during
the rewrite, the column must have been renamed.
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From nobozo at gmail.com  Sun Mar 24 03:04:07 2019
From: nobozo at gmail.com (Jon Forrest)
Date: Sat, 23 Mar 2019 19:04:07 -0700
Subject: [tex-k] Viewing Token Lists?
Message-ID: <q76oil$5vl8$1@blaine.gmane.org>

I'm studying TeX internals. One thing that would be nice
would be to see the token lists that TeX generates while
reading input files. Neither googling nor looking at the command
line arguments showed any way to do this. Am I missing something?

(I have access to Linux, Mac, and Windows versions of TeX, if
this helps).

Thanks,
Jon Forrest


From karl at freefriends.org  Sun Mar 24 22:40:26 2019
From: karl at freefriends.org (Karl Berry)
Date: Sun, 24 Mar 2019 15:40:26 -0600
Subject: [tex-k] Viewing Token Lists?
In-Reply-To: <q76oil$5vl8$1@blaine.gmane.org>
Message-ID: <201903242140.x2OLeQCa019594@freefriends.org>

    One thing that would be nice would be to see the token lists that
    TeX generates while reading input files. 

Totally agreed.

    Neither googling nor looking at the command line arguments showed
    any way to do this. Am I missing something?

As far as I know, unfortunately you are not missing anything. The
closest is etex's \showtokens{...}, which sort of displays the tokens of
.., but this isn't helpful wrt discovering what's happening when
absorbing input.

(Aside, unrelated to tokens: etex also defined \showifs and \showgroups,
which can be helpful in tracking down mismatched conditionals and
groups. \showlists from original TeX can also be surprisingly helpful.)

It seems to me that in luatex it should be possible to report (somehow)
on tokens as they are made, but I don't have anything specific to point
to. Maybe others here will know better. --best, karl.


From igor.liferenko at gmail.com  Mon Mar 25 09:19:46 2019
From: igor.liferenko at gmail.com (Igor Liferenko)
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2019 15:19:46 +0700
Subject: [tex-k] Viewing Token Lists?
Message-ID: <CAJyx361aCxPdmF1ror=e+42Hr=Z1oCxbzWbTq16eQOx8E3dZNA@mail.gmail.com>

Hi, Jon

    One thing that would be nice would be to see the token lists that
    TeX generates while reading input files.

You may try this: run an interactive session and type:

        \error here\par are \'some\tokens\bye

TeX will stop after reading "\error" - then repeatedly type "1", so
that one token is
deleted at a time.

Regards,
Igor