# [tex-k] bugs & suggestions in The METAFONTbook

Sat Jul 4 13:57:26 CEST 2020

Page C266, lines 19--20
"You can say either incr x' or incr (x)', within an expression; but incr x'
by itself is not a valid statement." Well, neither is incr(x)'.

Page C288, lines -13 and -6
Maybe the Boolean' should not be capitalized, like the rest of the book?
(If so, also decapitalize the index entry.)

Page C290, two code fragments
The first code fragment ends with a period, but the second ends with a
semicolon, even though they're similar (two def...enddefs) and are both
followed by new sentences. I wonder if Knuth has any pattern in mind...

Page C295, line 2
3.37' is apparently an approximate value, but the text doesn't say that.

Page C298, line 25
Best to put a space between the makepen' and the (', as in the rest
of the book.

Page C328, lines 18--26
Boldface the special's?

Volume C, Index
directiontime'
Change 295' to 298'.

\init'
Add 337' (where it is defined).

<internal quantity>'
Move the 265' to the internal quantities' entry, since the page
does not use angle brackets when mentioning the concept.

labels'
Delete the 275'.

<label>'
Add page 318, which mentions that <label> may appear in ligtable,
charlist or extensible commands, and they are mutually exclusive.

labels on {\it proofmode} output'
There is no identifier called proofmode', as far as I know. (You
may also want to change page 228, line -3.)

.tfm'
Change 315--317' to 315--321' (the whole Appendix F).

Volume C, In general
Is it possible to change the "..." macro so that italic correction is
not applied when it is followed by a subscript? Compare, for example,
the "theta"_1 and \penpos{1'} in the program on page 29.

Since Knuth said in the 2008 tune-up note that TeX and MF do not guard
against malicious input (http://tug.org/TUGboat/tb29-2/tb92knut.pdf), it
may be better to *drop* my arithmetic overflow bug reports. By the way,
do you consider the different ordering between tracingequations' (first
deduced first) and showdependencies' (last deduced first) a bug worth
reporting?

Incidentally, Knuth may be interested in this Chinese meta-font':
https://kaonashi-tyc.github.io/2017/04/06/zi2zi.html#motivation

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Previous reports:
https://github.com/dine2014/texbook-mfbook-bugs/blob/master/bugs.md