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Reviewer: Andrew Donald Booth

Donald Knuth's text setting program T 2EX is well known and is used by most serious North American writers of technical and mathematical papers and books. It was devised at the instigation of the American Mathematical Society. Most older producers of scientific text are well conditioned to T 2EX itself, but I have noticed that many of my younger students and colleagues have changed to L -2AT 2EX. Both systems are now available for IBM and compatible personal computers as well as for most large systems. The output can be produced on a 9-pin dot-matrix printer and is of good quality although the process takes about 20 minutes per page. On a laser printer either system produces a page which is almost indistinguishable from regular typesetting. One of the enjoyable things about T 2EX is Knuth's book which, although disorganized, is full of wit and, given the effort, is complete and accurate. The Duane Bibby cartoons of an amiable lion who illustrates the main trials of the printer are particularly endearing. Leslie Lamport's book describes a subset of “plain T 2EX,” the standard and complete Knuth system. In effect, he has attempted to simplify the user interface at the expense of some loss of generality. The particular strength of L -2AT 2EX lies in table and graphic layout and in its ability to construct such things as tables of contents and indexes in a semi-automatic fashion. Some attempt has also been made to simplify mathematical typesetting, particularly in the areas of array lineup and equation numbering. Some of this seems less than successful, for example replacing the $math$ of T 2EX by :2V(math:2V) and the display form $$math$$ by :2V[math:2V]. Again, $$a:2Vover{b+c}$$ seems better than the proposed :2V[:2Vfrac{a}{b+c}:2V]. Lamport gives arguments in favor of these revisions but I did not find them persuasive. On the other hand, the array instructions are a great improvement over those available in plain T 2EX. Another doubtful revision is the replacement of such things as :2Vit for italic letters by :2Vem for emphasized. Surely most readers who know anything about typesetting will confuse \em with an em measurement. Unlike the Knuth “T 2EXbook,” this L -2AT 2EX book does not have examples to instruct and test the novice user. This may or may not be a disadvantage. Knuth's book includes complete solutions to every example, which leaves the instructor who wants to use it as a textbook with the task of inventing new ones. Lamport evidently takes the position that it is better to use illustrative material in the body of the text where it requires reference to only one place; this is a great advantage. Evidently new users must make up their own minds which system to adopt, and the fact that this book is much better organized than Knuth's may prove crucial. Lamport emulates Knuth's witty style, and Bibby lion cartoons again lighten the tedium of reading complicated material. The T 2EX system is available from two sources. The original system was written in Pascal, but one of the PC variants has used a translation into C to produce the compiled code. I have used both versions, and there are some differences (including price). The cheaper version, from Personal T 2EX Inc., seems to be slightly easier to use and includes L -2AT 2EX and AMST 2EX in the package. It also includes a useful set of macros called “Vanilla” that embody many of the techniques used in L -2AT 2EX but are easier to use. T 2EX does not seem to be available for the Macintosh series of microcomputers but the source code is available, so energetic Mac users could compile their own versions.