TeX /tekh/ n.
An extremely powerful macro-based
text formatter written by Donald E. Knuth, very popular in the computer-science
community (it is good enough to have displaced Unix troff, the other favored formatter, even at many
Unix installations). TeX fans insist on the correct (guttural)
pronunciation, and the correct spelling (all caps, squished
together, with the E depressed below the baseline; the mixed-case
`TeX' is considered an acceptable kluge on ASCII-only devices).
Fans like to proliferate names from the word `TeX' -- such as
TeXnician (TeX user), TeXhacker (TeX programmer), TeXmaster
(competent TeX programmer), TeXhax, and TeXnique. See also CrApTeX.
Knuth began TeX because he had become annoyed at the declining
quality of the typesetting in volumes I-III of his monumental
"Art of Computer Programming" (see Knuth, also bible).
In a manifestation of the typical hackish urge to solve the
problem at hand once and for all, he began to design his own
typesetting language. He thought he would finish it on his
sabbatical in 1978; he was wrong by only about 8 years. The
language was finally frozen around 1985, but volume IV of "The
Art of Computer Programming" is not expected to appear until
2002. The impact and influence of TeX's design has been such that
nobody minds this very much. Many grand hackish projects have
started as a bit of toolsmithing
on the way to something else; Knuth's diversion was simply on a
grander scale than most.
TeX has also been a noteworthy example of free, shared, but
high-quality software. Knuth offers a monetary awards to anyone
who found and reported bugs dating from before the 1989 code
freeze; as the years wore on and the few remaining bugs were
fixed (and new ones even harder to find), the bribe went up.
Though well-written, TeX is so large (and so full of cutting edge
technique) that it is said to have unearthed at least one bug in
every Pascal system it has been compiled with.