Development
The original source code for the current TeX software is written in WEB, a mixture of documentation written in TeX and a Pascal subset in order to ensure portability. For example, TeX does all of its dynamic allocation itself from fixed-size arrays and uses only fixed-point arithmetic for its internal calculations. As a result, TeX has been ported to almost all operating systems, usually by using the web2c program to convert the source code into C instead of directly compiling the Pascal code.
Knuth has kept a very detailed log of all the bugs he has corrected and changes he has made in the program since 1982; as of 2008, the list contains 427 entries, not including the version modification that should be done after his death as the final change in TeX. Donald Knuth offers monetary awards to people who find and report a bug in TeX. The award per bug started at $2.56 (one "hexadecimal dollar") and doubled every year until it was frozen at its current value of $327.68. Knuth has lost relatively little money as there have been very few bugs claimed. In addition, recipients have been known to frame their check as proof that they found a bug in TeX rather than cashing it. Due to scammers finding scanned copies of his checks on the internet and using them to try to drain his bank account, Knuth no longer sends out real checks, but those who submit bug reports can get credit at The Bank of San Serriffe instead.
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Famous quotes containing the word development:
“The Cairo conference ... is about a complicated web of education and employment, consumption and poverty, development and health care. It is also about whether governments will follow where women have so clearly led them, toward safe, simple and reliable choices in family planning. While Cairo crackles with conflict, in the homes of the world the orthodoxies have been duly heard, and roundly ignored.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“Creativity seems to emerge from multiple experiences, coupled with a well-supported development of personal resources, including a sense of freedom to venture beyond the known.”
—Loris Malaguzzi (20th century)
“Sleep hath its own world,
And a wide realm of wild reality.
And dreams in their development have breath,
And tears, and tortures, and the touch of joy.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)