Re: [OT] was "Re: Appreciation / Financial support"

[David Kastrup]

Kieren MacMillan <address@hidden> writes:

> Hi all,
>
> Just a quick name-dropping reminiscence here…  =)
>
>> I don't think that the "last bugs" category can be
>> closed while Donald Knuth is alive
>
> In January 2009, I presented one of my mathematical papers at a
> conference in San Francisco. Much to my surprise, at one of the other
> sessions I attended (on the mathematics origami), Mr Knuth sat next to
> me. We struck up a small conversation, prompted by me telling him that
> I referenced his paper in the one I had just presented. Ultimately, I
> told him thanks — on behalf of everyone — for TeX.
>
> He seems like a wonderful man.

Yup.  On some TeX meeting, he and Hermann Zapf ("Palatino", "Zapf
Chancery") were telling anecdotes.  He showed a slide of a
typographically awful traffic sign that caused him to change his drive
to work in order not to have to see it every day.  He has a pipe organ
at home <URL:http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/organ.html>, so he
is not exactly a stranger to music.  One does not really need to tell
all that much about his works.  TeX has been a side-track, but one he is
known better for than his erudite groundwork for Computer Science (which
is what he needed TeX for).

Hermann Zapf was also amazing.  He must have been eighty-five or
something at that time, and you had this frail frame talking about font
features and with a slight tremor all the time.  And then he illustrates
some serif features and details by taking a piece of chalk and with few
swift strokes drawing perfectly shaped letters with the discussed
details and features.

-- 
David Kastrup