ISSN: 2534-5192 (electronic) – 2681-8566 (print)

◀ Saiya L. Karamali▲ ProceedingsJan Kučera ▶



ISBN: 978-2-487055-12-4
e-ISBN: 978-2-487055-13-1

Download (122.87 MB)

The Grapholinguistic Model of TeX, followed by an “All Questions Answered” Session
Donald E. Knuth, interviewed by Yannis Haralambous
Download (3.7 MB)

Abstract. This is the transcription of the interview and “All Questions Answered” session of Donald E. Knuth at the 2024 Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century conference, on October 24th, 2024. The text has been (slightly) edited and annotated with footnotes by the interviewer. In June 2026, Knuth read through the text and provided several remarks of his own, which have been incorporated into the footnotes {and typeset in Xerox PARC’s Cream font to set them apart from the interviewer’s text.}

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36824/2024-graf-knut


Barchas, Janine. 2003. Graphic Design, Print Culture, and the Eighteenth-Century Novel. Cambridge University Press.
Boag, Andrew. 2000. “Monotype and Phototypesetting.” Journal of the Printing History Society 2:57–77. https://apmub.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/monotype-and-phototypesetting-andrew-boag.pdf.
Christman, David P. 1980. “The Last Whole XGP Font Catalog.”
Cloux, Patrick. 2007. Mon Libraire, Sa Vie, Son Œuvre. Le Temps qu’il fait.
Couperin, François. 1716. L’art de Toucher Le Clavecin. Paris: Foucaut.
Doxiadis, Apostolos, and Christos Papadimitriou. 2009. Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth. Bloomsbury, New York.
Earnest, Les. 1976. “Find a FONT.”
Graham, Ronald L., Donald E. Knuth, and Oren Patashnik. 1989. Concrete Mathematics. Addison-Wesley.
Haddad, Gérard. 1984. Manger Le Livre : Rites Alimentaires Et Fonction Paternelle. Grasset.
Hagen, Hans, Harmut Henkel, Taco Hoekwater, and Luigi Scarso. 2025. “LuaTeX Reference Manual.”
Haralambous, Yannis. 2007. Fonts & Encodings. From Advanced Typography to Unicode and Everything in Between. Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly.
———. 2018. “TeX as a Path, a Talk Given at Donald Knuth’s 80th Birthday Celebration Symposium.” TUGboat 39 (1): 8–15.
———. 2019. “Phonocentrism in Greece: Side Effects of Two Centuries of Diglossia.”
Haralambous, Yannis, and Martin Dürst. 2019. “Unicode from a Linguistic Point of View.” In Proceedings of Graphemics in the 21st Century, Brest 2018, edited by Yannis Haralambous, 167–83. Brest: Fluxus Editions. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.36824/2018-graf-hara1.
Haralambous, Yannis, Frédéric Landragin, and Kenichi Handa. 2020. “Graphemic and Graphetic Methods in Speculative Fiction.” In Proceedings of Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century, 2020, edited by Yannis Haralambous, 4:259–359. Grapholinguistics and Its Applications. Brest: Fluxus Editions. https://doi.org/10.36824/2018-graf-hara2.
Hofstadter, Douglas R. 1982. “Metafont, Metamathematics, and Metaphysics: Comments on Donald Knuth’s Article ‘the Concept of a Meta-Font’ .” Visible Language 16 (4): 309–38.
———. 1985. In Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern. Basic Civitas Books.
———. 1987. Ambigrammi. Un Microcosmo Ideale Per Lo Studio Della Creatività. Hopefulmonster.
Huot-Marchand, Thomas. 2022. “Knuth Vs. Hofstadter.” In Systèmes : Logiques, Graphies, Matérialités, edited by Kim Sacks and Victor Guégan. Design Art Media.
Kim, Scott Edward. 1981. Inversions. Byte Books.
———. 1987. “Viewpoint: Toward a Computer for Visual Thinkers.” PhD thesis, Stanford University.
Knuth, Donald E. 1968-. The Art of Computer Programming. Addison Wesley.
———. 1982a. TeX: The Program. Vol. B. Computers and Typesetting. Addison Wesley.
———. 1982b. The Book. Vol. C. Computers and Typesetting. Addison Wesley.
———. 1982c. “The Concept of a Meta-Font.” Visible Language 16 (1): 3–27.
———. 1982d. The TeXbook. Vol. A. Computers and Typesetting. Addison Wesley.
———. 2010. “An Earthshaking Announcement.” TUGboat 31:121–24.
———. 2011. Selected Papers on Fun & Games. Vol. 192. CSLI Lecture Notes. CSLI Publications/Center for the Study of Language & Information.
———. 2016. Digital Typography. Vol. 78. CSLI Lecture Notes. CSLI Publications/Center for the Study of Language & Information.
Knuth, Donald E., and Luis Trabb Pardo. 1980. “The Early Development of Programming Languages.” In A History of Computing in the Twentieth Century, edited by N. Metropolis, J. Howlett, and Gian-Carlo Rota, 197–273. San Diego: Academic Press.
Liang, Franklin Mark. 1983. “Word Hy-Phen-a-Tion by Com-Put-Er.” PhD thesis, Stanford University.
Mullaney, Thomas S. 2018. The Chinese Typewriter. A History. MIT Press.
PDF Reference. 2006. Adobe Systems Incorporated.
Pearson, Neil. 2007. Obelisk: A History of Jack Kahane and the Obelisk Press. Liverpool University Press.
PostScript Language Reference. 1999. Adobe Systems Incorporated.
Raymond, Eric, ed. 1991. The New Hacker’s Dictionary. The MIT Press.
Roberts, Siobhan. 2018. “The Yoda of Silicon Valley.” The New York Times.
Robertson, Will, Khaled Hosny, and Karl Berry. 2025. “The Reference Guide.”
Sperberg-McQueen, C. M., Lou Burnard, et al. 2025. TEI P5: Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange. The TEI Consortium.
Steele, Guy et al., eds. 1983. The Hacker’s Dictionary. A Guide to the Computer Underground. Harper & Row.
Trabb Pardo, Luis. 1978. “Set Representation and Set Intersection.” PhD thesis, Stanford University.
Veytsman, Boris. 2024. “Face/Interface 2023 Conference: Global Type Design and Human-Computer Interaction.” TUGboat 45 (1): 7–10.
Voogd, Peter de. 2018. “A Singular Stroke of Eloquence: Tristram Shandy’s Typography.” Nordic Journal of English Studies 17:74–84.
Δοξιάδης, Ἀπόστολος, Χρίστος Χ. Παπαδημητρίου, Ἀλέκος Παπαδᾶτος, and Annie Di Donna. 2008. Logicomix. 2ptἼκαρος. 

@BOOK{barchas,
   AUTHOR = {Janine Barchas},
   TITLE = {Graphic Design, Print Culture, and the Eighteenth-Century Novel},
   PUBLISHER = {Cambridge University Press},
   YEAR = {2003},
}

@ARTICLE{monophoto,
   AUTHOR = {Andrew Boag},
   TITLE = {Monotype and phototypesetting},
   JOURNAL = {Journal of the Printing History Society},
   YEAR = {2000},
   VOLUME = {2},
   PAGES = {57--77},
   URL = {https://apmub.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/monotype-and-phototypesetting-andrew-boag.pdf},
}

@TECHREPORT{xgp,
   AUTHOR = {Christman, David P.},
   TITLE = {{The Last Whole XGP Font Catalog}},
   YEAR = {1980},
   NOTE = {MIT AI lab working paper 197},
}

@BOOK{cloux,
   AUTHOR = {Patrick Cloux},
   TITLE = {Mon libraire, sa vie, son œuvre},
   PUBLISHER = {Le Temps qu'il fait},
   YEAR = {2007},
}

@BOOK{couperin,
   AUTHOR = {François Couperin},
   TITLE = {L'art de toucher le clavecin},
   PUBLISHER = {Foucaut},
   ADDRESS = {Paris},
   YEAR = {1716},
}

@BOOK{logicomix,
   AUTHOR = {Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou},
   TITLE = {Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth},
   PUBLISHER = {Bloomsbury, New York},
   YEAR = {2009},
}

@TECHREPORT{earnest,
   AUTHOR = {Les Earnest},
   TITLE = {Find a FONT},
   YEAR = {1976},
   NOTE = {Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory Operating Note~74 \url{https://archive.computerhistory.org/resources/access/text/2017/06/102774987-05-01-acc.pdf}},
}

@BOOK{concrete,
   AUTHOR = {Graham, Ronald L. and Knuth, Donald E. and Patashnik, Oren},
   TITLE = {Concrete Mathematics},
   PUBLISHER = {Addison-Wesley},
   YEAR = {1989},
}

@BOOK{haddad,
   AUTHOR = {Haddad, Gérard},
   TITLE = {Manger le livre~: rites alimentaires et fonction paternelle},
   PUBLISHER = {Grasset},
   YEAR = {1984},
}

@UNPUBLISHED{luatex,
   AUTHOR = {Hagen, Hans and Henkel, Harmut and Hoekwater, Taco and Scarso, Luigi},
   TITLE = {Lua\TeX{} Reference Manual},
   YEAR = {2025},
   NOTE = {\url{http://mirrors.ctan.org/systems/doc/luatex/luatex.pdf}},
}

@BOOK{yh07book,
   AUTHOR = {Haralambous, Yannis},
   TITLE = {Fonts \& Encodings. {F}rom Advanced Typography to {U}nicode and Everything in Between},
   PUBLISHER = {O'Reilly},
   ADDRESS = {Sebastopol, CA},
   YEAR = {2007},
   PAGES = {xx+1018},
}

@ARTICLE{yh18tb,
   AUTHOR = {Haralambous, Yannis},
   TITLE = {{\TeX} as a Path, a Talk Given at {Donald Knuth's} 80th Birthday Celebration Symposium},
   JOURNAL = {TUGboat},
   YEAR = {2018},
   VOLUME = {39},
   NUMBER = {1},
   PAGES = {8--15},
}

@UNPUBLISHED{polytonic,
   AUTHOR = {Haralambous, Yannis},
   TITLE = {Phonocentrism in {G}reece: {S}ide Effects of Two Centuries of Diglossia},
   YEAR = {2019},
   NOTE = {poster presented at \emph{AWLL12}, Cambridge, UK, \url{https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02480230}},
}

@INPROCEEDINGS{yh19graf1,
   AUTHOR = {Haralambous, Yannis and D{\"u}rst, Martin},
   EDITOR = {Haralambous, Yannis},
   TITLE = {Unicode from a Linguistic Point of View},
   BOOKTITLE = {{Proceedings of Graphemics in the 21st Century, Brest 2018}},
   PUBLISHER = {Fluxus Editions},
   ADDRESS = {Brest},
   YEAR = {2019},
   PAGES = {167--183},
}

@INPROCEEDINGS{yh20graf,
   AUTHOR = {Haralambous, Yannis and Landragin, Fr{\'e}d{\'e}ric and Handa, Kenichi},
   EDITOR = {Haralambous, Yannis},
   TITLE = {Graphemic and Graphetic Methods in Speculative Fiction},
   BOOKTITLE = {{Proceedings of Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century, 2020}},
   SERIES = {Grapholinguistics and Its Applications},
   PUBLISHER = {Fluxus Editions},
   ADDRESS = {Brest},
   YEAR = {2020},
   VOLUME = {4},
   PAGES = {259--359},
}

@ARTICLE{hofmeta,
   AUTHOR = {Douglas R. Hofstadter},
   TITLE = {Metafont, Metamathematics, and Metaphysics: Comments on Donald Knuth's Article “The Concept of a Meta-Font”\,},
   JOURNAL = {Visible Language},
   YEAR = {1982},
   VOLUME = {16},
   NUMBER = {4},
   PAGES = {309--338},
}

@INPROCEEDINGS{metamagical,
   AUTHOR = {Douglas R. Hofstadter},
   BOOKTITLE = {Metamagical Themas: Questing for the Essence of Mind and Pattern},
   PUBLISHER = {Basic Civitas Books},
   YEAR = {1985},
}

@BOOK{ambigram,
   AUTHOR = {Douglas R. Hofstadter},
   TITLE = {Ambigrammi. Un microcosmo ideale per lo studio della creatività},
   PUBLISHER = {Hopefulmonster},
   YEAR = {1987},
}

@INPROCEEDINGS{thomas,
   AUTHOR = {Huot-Marchand, Thomas},
   EDITOR = {Sacks, Kim and Guégan, Victor},
   TITLE = {Knuth vs. Hofstadter},
   BOOKTITLE = {Systèmes : logiques, graphies, matérialités},
   SERIES = {Design Art Media},
   YEAR = {2022},
}

@BOOK{kim1981,
   AUTHOR = {Kim, Scott Edward},
   TITLE = {Inversions},
   PUBLISHER = {Byte Books},
   YEAR = {1981},
}

@PHDTHESIS{kim,
   AUTHOR = {Kim, Scott Edward},
   TITLE = {Viewpoint: Toward a Computer for Visual Thinkers},
   SCHOOL = {Stanford University},
   YEAR = {1987},
}

@BOOK{ACP,
   AUTHOR = {Knuth, Donald E.},
   TITLE = {The Art of Computer Programming},
   PUBLISHER = {Addison Wesley},
   YEAR = {1968-},
}

@BOOK{texcode,
   AUTHOR = {Knuth, Donald E.},
   TITLE = {{\TeX}: The Program},
   SERIES = {Computers and Typesetting},
   PUBLISHER = {Addison Wesley},
   YEAR = {1982},
   VOLUME = {B},
}

@BOOK{mfbook,
   AUTHOR = {Knuth, Donald E.},
   TITLE = {The {\MF}book},
   SERIES = {Computers and Typesetting},
   PUBLISHER = {Addison Wesley},
   YEAR = {1982},
   VOLUME = {C},
}

@BOOK{texbook,
   AUTHOR = {Knuth, Donald E.},
   TITLE = {The {\TeX}book},
   SERIES = {Computers and Typesetting},
   PUBLISHER = {Addison Wesley},
   YEAR = {1982},
   VOLUME = {A},
}

@ARTICLE{metafont,
   AUTHOR = {Donald E. Knuth},
   TITLE = {The Concept of a Meta-Font},
   JOURNAL = {Visible Language},
   YEAR = {1982},
   VOLUME = {16},
   NUMBER = {1},
   PAGES = {3--27},
}

@ARTICLE{marianne,
   AUTHOR = {Donald E. Knuth},
   TITLE = {An Earthshaking Announcement},
   JOURNAL = {TUGboat},
   YEAR = {2010},
   VOLUME = {31},
   PAGES = {121--124},
}

@BOOK{fungam,
   AUTHOR = {Knuth, Donald E.},
   TITLE = {{Selected Papers on Fun \& Games}},
   SERIES = {CSLI Lecture Notes},
   PUBLISHER = {CSLI Publications/Center for the Study of Language \& Information},
   YEAR = {2011},
   VOLUME = {192},
}

@BOOK{digtyp,
   AUTHOR = {Knuth, Donald E.},
   TITLE = {Digital Typography},
   SERIES = {CSLI Lecture Notes},
   PUBLISHER = {CSLI Publications/Center for the Study of Language \& Information},
   YEAR = {2016},
   VOLUME = {78},
}

@INPROCEEDINGS{tpk,
   AUTHOR = {Donald E. Knuth and Luis Trabb~Pardo},
   EDITOR = {N. Metropolis and J. Howlett and Gian-Carlo Rota},
   TITLE = {The Early Development of Programming Languages},
   BOOKTITLE = {A History of Computing in the Twentieth Century},
   PUBLISHER = {Academic Press},
   ADDRESS = {San Diego},
   YEAR = {1980},
   PAGES = {197-273},
}

@PHDTHESIS{liang,
   AUTHOR = {Liang, Franklin Mark},
   TITLE = {Word Hy-phen-a-tion by Com-put-er},
   SCHOOL = {Stanford University},
   YEAR = {1983},
}

@BOOK{mullaney,
   AUTHOR = {Thomas S. Mullaney},
   TITLE = {The Chinese Typewriter. A History},
   PUBLISHER = {MIT Press},
   YEAR = {2018},
}

@BOOK{pdf,
   TITLE = {PDF Reference},
   PUBLISHER = {Adobe Systems Incorporated},
   YEAR = {2006},
}

@BOOK{pearson,
   AUTHOR = {Neil Pearson},
   TITLE = {Obelisk: A History of Jack Kahane and the Obelisk Press},
   PUBLISHER = {Liverpool University Press},
   YEAR = {2007},
}

@BOOK{ps,
   TITLE = {PostScript Language Reference},
   PUBLISHER = {Adobe Systems Incorporated},
   YEAR = {1999},
}

@BOOK{hacker,
   EDITOR = {Raymond, Eric},
   TITLE = {The New Hacker's Dictionary},
   PUBLISHER = {The MIT Press},
   YEAR = {1991},
}

@ARTICLE{siobhan,
   AUTHOR = {Siobhan Roberts},
   TITLE = {The Yoda of Silicon Valley},
   JOURNAL = {The New York Times},
   YEAR = {2018},
   NOTE = {Appeared in the \emph{New York Times} edition of Dec. 17th, 2018, \url{https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/science/donald-knuth-computers-algorithms-programming.html}},
}

@UNPUBLISHED{xetex,
   AUTHOR = {Will Robertson and Khaled Hosny and Karl Berry},
   TITLE = {The {\XeTeX} Reference Guide},
   YEAR = {2025},
   NOTE = {\url{http://mirrors.ctan.org/info/xetexref/xetex-reference.pdf}},
}

@BOOK{tei,
   AUTHOR = {C.M. Sperberg-McQueen and Lou Burnard and others},
   TITLE = {TEI P5: Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange},
   PUBLISHER = {The TEI Consortium},
   YEAR = {2025},
}

@BOOK{hacker83,
   EDITOR = {Steele, Guy and others},
   TITLE = {The Hacker's Dictionary. A Guide to the Computer Underground},
   PUBLISHER = {Harper \& Row},
   YEAR = {1983},
}

@PHDTHESIS{trabb,
   AUTHOR = {Trabb~Pardo, Luis},
   TITLE = {Set Representation and Set Intersection},
   SCHOOL = {Stanford University},
   YEAR = {1978},
}

@ARTICLE{veytsman,
   AUTHOR = {Boris Veytsman},
   TITLE = {Face/Interface 2023 conference: Global type design and human-computer interaction},
   JOURNAL = {TUGboat},
   YEAR = {2024},
   VOLUME = {45},
   NUMBER = {1},
   PAGES = {7--10},
}

@ARTICLE{voogd,
   AUTHOR = {Voogd, Peter de},
   TITLE = {A singular stroke of eloquence: Tristram Shandy's typography},
   JOURNAL = {Nordic Journal of English Studies},
   YEAR = {2018},
   VOLUME = {17},
   PAGES = {74--84},
}

@BOOK{logicomixgr,
   AUTHOR = {Ἀπόστολος Δοξιάδης and Χρίστος Χ. Παπαδημητρίου and Ἀλέκος Παπαδᾶτος and Annie Di~Donna},
   TITLE = {Logicomix},
   PUBLISHER = {\kern2ptἼκαρος},
   YEAR = {2008},
}

Donald E. Knuth, interviewed by Yannis Haralambous (2024), “The Grapholinguistic Model of TeX, followed by an “All Questions Answered” Session,” in Proceedings of Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century, 2024 (Yannis Haralambous, Ed.), Grapholinguistics and Its Applications, Vol. 12, Brest: Fluxus Editions, 393–415.


@INPROCEEDINGS{gla12-knut,
   AUTHOR = {Donald E. Knuth and \textup{interviewed by} Yannis Haralambous},
   EDITOR = {Haralambous, Yannis},
   TITLE = {{The Grapholinguistic Model of \TeX, followed by an “All Questions Answered” Session}},
   BOOKTITLE = {{Proceedings of Grapholinguistics in the 21st Century, 2024}},
   SERIES = {{Grapholinguistics and Its Applications}},
   VOLUME = {12},
   PUBLISHER = {Fluxus Editions},
   ADDRESS = {Brest},
   YEAR = {2024},
   PAGES = {393--415},
   DOI = {https://doi.org/10.36824/2024-graf-knut},
}