[reportlab-users] RE: Table sizing algorithms - comments welcome

Andy Robinson reportlab-users@reportlab.com
Tue, 22 Apr 2003 09:41:21 +0100


> That's what I'm trying to say. There are *many* table environ-
> ments for LaTeX users, some optimising different features. This
> is totally ok. What I'm a little surprised with is the fact of be-
> ing unable to find anything directly connected to Knuth himself,
> which suggests that table rendering is a trivial issue! ;-)

IMHO he was on a 10-year quest for the perfect paragraph,
had a sense of how to do it, and little else concerned him.  
Maybe he figured he could not afford 4 decades on tables 
and left it to the user group :-)

BTW, I was reading a cheap thriller (Trading Reality, Michael Ridpath)
about a Virtual Reality company that gets it trouble.  The deceased
boss's younger brother, a bond trader, takes over, and says to
the head techie that he wants to learn about computers
and try some programming.  She hands him TAOCP and says
"I don't believe you. Come back when you've read that and 
we'll talk!".  I doubt Mr. Ridpath has ever looked at TAOCP
which made it doubly hilarious.

- Andy