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.

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...

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.

You worked for Frame? I used to love FrameMaker. To this day I haven't forgiven Adobe for killing the Mac version.

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.

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.

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.