The Errors of TeX [pdf] (1989)

I too kept a log of my errors in the 1980&#x27;s, hoping to become a better C programmer. I imagined that with careful enough reflection, I would never make the same mistake twice.<p>I found the log many years later. Last entry: &quot;Forgot to eat. Got sick.&quot;

Ok. Knuth makes mistakes, nice to know. Let&#x27;s read about them. Oh, he categorizes them nicely.<p>WAIT A MINUTE HE HAS A LIST OF CATEGORIES FROM A-T THAT ARE NAMED TO COINCIDE WITH THE LETTER!<p><i>And they alliterate!</i>

While not an article, a more recent listing (current as of 15 January 2021) is:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ctan.math.washington.edu&#x2F;tex-archive&#x2F;info&#x2F;knuth-pdf&#x2F;errata&#x2F;errorlog.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;ctan.math.washington.edu&#x2F;tex-archive&#x2F;info&#x2F;knuth-pdf&#x2F;...</a><p>and he also keeps track of errors in his books:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu&#x2F;~knuth&#x2F;books.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu&#x2F;~knuth&#x2F;books.html</a><p>and issues certificates for the Bank of the Island of San Seriffe for finding them (used to be physical checks --- I got one for an error and a minor point of improvement in his book on _Digital Typography_).

While enjoying that read, I kept thinking along the way &quot;I wish the original TeX source of this PDF were available somewhere as I&#x27;d love to see this rendered for my high resolution display the way Knuth intended.&quot;

Why is it that pretty much everything Knuth writes is wildly detailed but yet, somehow, deeply engaging?<p>Maybe I&#x27;m such a fan because of many great experiences with tex (and latex). The output is just so beautiful. And the notation (once you get used to the backslashes etc) is so clean.<p>But, heck, I got hooked when I studied Figure 12 of [1], as an undergraduate leafing through a math journal. At first, I thought &quot;what&#x27;s wrong with this nutcase, those &quot;s&quot; letters all look fine to me&quot;. Then I started to see differences. And then some looked ugly. That one in the middle, though, looked better and better, the more I studied the figure. Pretty soon, I was hooked.<p>1. Knuth, Donald E. “Mathematical Typography.” Bull. Amer. Math. Soc. (N.S.) 1, no. 2 (March 1979): 337–72.