Cover of “LaTeX: A Document Preparation System, 2nd edition”, Published by Addison-Wesley Professional (June 30, 1994) © 1994, authored by Leslie Lamport
LaTeX was slightly later than the 1992 Turbo Pascal 7.0 Language Guide having both entry in the manual about Recursion (“recursive loop, see recursive loop”) which of course is similar to “infinite loop” and entries for “infinite loop See loop, infinite” and “loop, infinite See infinite loop”.
So what is LaTeX?
Where Donald Knuth created the typesetting program TeX (visually TeX), Leslie created a set of macros for it, later named LaTeX (visually LaTeX) and wrote the first (still famous) book – cover on the right – on it: [Wayback/Archive] LaTeX: A Document Preparation System by Leslie Lamport, second edition, printed in 1994 back then by Addison-Wesley (now Pearson Education, subsidiary of Pearson plc) with ISBN 9780201529838.
It’s gimmick was at page 252, inside the index referring “infinite loop” to page 252 itself.
Many people keep posting screenshots of the page without referencing where it is from. That’s a bit sad, as these gimmicks are an important part of history where programming books were as much about explaining features of computing environment, as well as explaining underlying concepts like recursion.
So this 2024 post finally made me write this blog post: [Wayback/Archive] vx-underground on X: “HELP!”
The Wiert Corner - irregular stream of stuff 