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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">barbara beeton wrote:<br>
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<blockquote type="cite" cite="mid:alpine.LRH.2.21.1909131906490.1029@tug.org">On Fri, 13 Sep 2019, Taylor, P wrote:
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<blockquote type="cite">Tomas Rokicki wrote: <br>
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A google search immediately returns <br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX_font_metric">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TeX_font_metric</a>
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which has the appropriate reference to tftopl as well as being a <br>
pretty easy read itself. <br>
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Do you have any idea of which iteration of TeX David was writing, since TeX82 would require "\font
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\A=CMR10" whilst TeX78 would have required (as David himself notes) "\:A=CMR10".
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Philip Taylor <br>
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The article by David Fuchs is from TUGboat volume 2 (1981), <br>
so TeX was in flux. In fact, in the first paragraph, there <br>
is this sentence: <br>
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For instance, when you say \font A=CMR10 to TeX (\:A=CMR10 in the old lingo), ...
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so that should settle that question.<br>
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Well, it didn't settle it for me, which is why I asked ! It was clear that \:A=CMR10 was from TeX78. because the first thing I did on reading that was to take my copy of
<i>TeX and MetaFont </i>and look up the syntax of the \font-equiv command, which was exactly as reported by DF as "the old lingo". But it was (and still is) unclear which version of TeX required/allowed \font A=CMR10 rather than \font \A=CMR10. Now you say
that "TeX was in a state of flux", but this is the first suggestion that I have ever read that TeX did not go direct from TeX78 to TeX82 — are you saying that there were intermediate (but unnumbered/unnamed) versions, and if so, were they found "in the wild"
or only within the safe haven of Leyland Stanford University ? And having declared \font A = CMR10, how did one then use A, and why did words containing "A" not cause trouble ?<br>
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Philip Taylor<br>
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