An Earthshaking Announcement
Why Hacker News recommends it
Mostly used as a joke link or reference in threads about Knuth, TeX and fonts, where its punchline is not to be spoiled.
What it is
Donald Knuth gives a talk at Stanford, recorded by Zeeba TV for the TeX Users Group, titled An Earthshaking Announcement.
Recommended by 0 HN commenters across 0 different months, 2020 to 2023.
What Hacker News said
Cites svat · 2021-05 · on “Using Computer Modern on the web (2013)”
This is backwards: This comment (and its grandparent) makes it sound as though Knuth set out to create a typesetting system and a font creation system, and then was faced with the choice of who would design the first font for the system. In reality, his work in typesetting started with a very narrow goal: when the publishers of TAOCP were about to set the second edition of Volume 2 using phototypesetting (instead of hot-metal typesetting as in the first edition of Vols 1–3 and 2nd edition of Vol 1), he found the galley proofs awful, and at the same time he came to know of the existence of a digital typesetter, so he thought he might be able to retain the appearance of the first edition. That