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Re:Apple and LaTeX by webwielder2 on Sunday July 02, 2017 @08:37AM (#14682219)
Better title: Dr. Drang Notices Some Crappy Formatting in a Slide and Also Programmers Aren’t Mathematicians
Re:Apple and LaTeX by ioquatix on Sunday July 02, 2017 @09:14AM (#14682337)
Woah there, some programmers are mathematicians.
Re:Apple and LaTeX by adrianN on Sunday July 02, 2017 @01:35PM (#14683443)
All programmers who have heard of the Curry-Howard correspondence are mathematicians.
Re:Apple and LaTeX by majewsky on Sunday July 02, 2017 @04:04PM (#14684100)
By that logic, everyone reading this thread is now a mathematician. :)
Re:Apple and LaTeX by nikdaheratik on Monday July 03, 2017 @01:57AM (#14686123)
Except that Apple has been pushing better support for math in their office suite. It's just that the people handling these slides didn't use it.
Re:Apple and LaTeX by rasz on Sunday July 02, 2017 @09:23AM (#14682370)
Jobs would fire 5 people for something like this. Nowadays nobody at Apple cares anymore.
Re:Apple and LaTeX by xkcd-sucks on Sunday July 02, 2017 @12:05PM (#14683074)
With the "positive anymore," [O] you can say:

"Anymore, nobody at Apple cares"

[O] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_anymore

Re:Apple and LaTeX by nxc18 on Sunday July 02, 2017 @12:47PM (#14683217)
I remember when I moved from the northeast and heard the positive anymore for the first time. I assumed the speaker was just somewhat dim, or maybe suffering from a minor stroke.

It turns out this is an established construction if you venture away from the west and best coasts...

Re:Apple and LaTeX by mwfunk on Sunday July 02, 2017 @02:30PM (#14683711)
Weird, I've never heard this either and I grew up in Michigan (not quite "positive anymore" territory according to Wikipedia, but certainly in the neighborhood).

I believe it, I'm just always pleasantly surprised to learn about common things that everyone but me seems to have known about.

Re:Apple and LaTeX by JadeNB on Wednesday July 05, 2017 @02:12PM (#14704829)
> if you venture away from the west and best coasts...

Typo, editorialising, or both?

Re:Apple and LaTeX by webwielder2 on Sunday July 02, 2017 @09:35AM (#14682415)
I think both of those sentences are untrue.
Re:Apple and LaTeX by planb on Sunday July 02, 2017 @01:52PM (#14683536)
Whoa, why is this downvoted so heavily? It's obviously a joke, and it's funny because Jobs really cared about typography, so he probably would have objected to this.
Re:Apple and LaTeX by tptacek on Sunday July 02, 2017 @10:40AM (#14682665)
No, he would not have. He would happily have gotten on stage in front of this slide.
Re:Apple and LaTeX by drfuchs on Sunday July 02, 2017 @01:15PM (#14683339)
Having tagged along with Knuth when Jobs invited him over for a personal demonstration of a pre-production Macintosh, I can attest that Jobs was knowledgable about, and cared strongly about, typography. And having been in the room when Jobs pitched the NeXT cube and printer to Frame, to convince us to do a port of FrameMaker, this was again clearly the case. So, no way he would have allowed this slide in any stage appearance of his.

For further evidence, remember that what (once) saved Apple was the the Jobs-driven pair of Macintosh and Apple LaserWriter (the first PostScript printer). This combination sparked the desktop publishing revolution, as it allowed the masses to get typographically reasonable output semi-affordably. He made both of these devices happen, and good typography was a core goal.

Re:Apple and LaTeX by FabHK on Sunday July 02, 2017 @03:39PM (#14683984)
Yes. Jobs famously took a calligraphy class at Reed college, and mentioned frequently how it influenced him and e.g. the design of the Macintosh.

http://www.leemunroe.com/steve-jobs-calligraphy/

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/a-tribute-to-a-gr...

Re:Apple and LaTeX by tptacek on Sunday July 02, 2017 @04:03PM (#14684093)
I'm aware of his appreciation for typography.

But:

1. He's gotten up on stage in front of typographical faux-pas in the past.

2. Appreciation for typography doesn't translate to taste in mathematical typography. Math reads differently.

Re:Apple and LaTeX by Finnucane on Sunday July 02, 2017 @03:47PM (#14684015)
You worked for Frame? I used to love FrameMaker. To this day I haven't forgiven Adobe for killing the Mac version.
Re:Apple and LaTeX by drfuchs on Sunday July 02, 2017 @11:50PM (#14685718)
Me neither. And, yes, I was the first employee after the 4 founders of Frame. I did the PostScript output, all the Book functionality, conditional text, and the whole API; but even after 10 years and the Adobe acquisition, not the equation editor I was hired to do.
Re:Apple and LaTeX by coldtea on Sunday July 02, 2017 @01:05PM (#14683291)
While he might not have cared for a slide from a technical presentation, he would not have "happily gotten on stage in front of this slide".

This is all contexture of course, but even if he didn't know the nuances of minus vs dash etc, he wouldn't have left the extra space on the "e" and the misaligned equals signs to slip by.

Re:Apple and LaTeX by rasz on Sunday July 02, 2017 @01:44PM (#14683500)
Yes, a man obsessed with typography (fonts, kerning, pixel perfection), man who often mentioned how calligraphy class changed his life would stand in front of this crooked abomination.
Re:Apple and LaTeX by coldtea on Sunday July 02, 2017 @09:59AM (#14682509)
Two words: iPod socks.
Re:Apple and LaTeX by cooper12 on Sunday July 02, 2017 @09:54AM (#14682494)
Jeez, even after the wealthy man died from curable cancer, his cult of personality persists. (or should I say "reality distortion field") This isn't the main keynote at WWDC, but rather is just a panel, so I don't see why Jobs would have cared or had the resourced to care about each presentation. Additionally, while Jobs did take a calligraphy course and was in tune with typography, I doubt he was especially knowledgable about mathematical typesetting as this author is. Lastly, which 5 people would be fired due to shoddy typesetting? The author likely just made their own slides and the WWDC coordinates obviously can't work on each and every presentation.
Re:Apple and LaTeX by coldtea on Sunday July 02, 2017 @10:00AM (#14682514)
>Lastly, which 5 people would be fired due to shoddy typesetting?

Or you know, it might just be no persons fired, but just the team/presenter scolded.

It's not like the parent made an absolute statement. Rather they wanted to make what we call "a point".

Re:Apple and LaTeX by cooper12 on Sunday July 02, 2017 @10:07AM (#14682537)
Meh, saying "five people would have been fired!" is too hyperbolic for my tastes. If you click through to this other HN post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14671047), you'll notice they don't use proper typographic emdashes (typewriter dashes `--` instead of `—`) and they have a black diamond where their asterism [0] or some other mark would have gone. However, you don't see me commenting there to derail the discussion away from the fascinating topic of these creatures' breathing. In the same way, this is just a minor aspect of the WWDC presentation and isn't such a big deal necessitating people to have been fired for.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterism_(typography)

Re:Apple and LaTeX by coldtea on Sunday July 02, 2017 @12:08PM (#14683083)
>However, you don't see me commenting there to derail the discussion away from the fascinating topic of these creatures' breathing.

Only in this post's case, the quality of the typography WAS the topic under discussion.

Re:Apple and LaTeX by cooper12 on Sunday July 02, 2017 @09:12PM (#14685262)
My point is that it's such a minor aspect of an otherwise edifying talk on photography. Certainly not something to demand firings for.
Re:Apple and LaTeX by ClassyJacket on Sunday July 02, 2017 @10:59AM (#14682755)
Source, please, that pancreatic cancer is "curable".
Re:Apple and LaTeX by cooper12 on Sunday July 02, 2017 @09:10PM (#14685257)
Sure, take it from the chief of Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center's integrative medicine department: "Jobs's faith in alternative medicine likely cost him his life.... He had the only kind of pancreatic cancer that is treatable and curable.... He essentially committed suicide." https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/06/18/book-r...
Re:Apple and LaTeX by ClassyJacket on Wednesday July 05, 2017 @10:37AM (#14702710)
Source that that person directly treated Jobs specifically and had every detail of his case? Sounds like they're working from rumour like everyone else.