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Edsger W. Dijkstra Archive, Transcriptions (utexas.edu)
37 points by jacquesm on May 25, 2014 | hide | past | favorite | 8 comments



This is a fantastic effort, the transcription and the archival of this content. If you are fortunate enough to be able to read the originals, definitely check some of them out. Dijkstra's handwriting is gorgeous, it gives the text humanness and a hint of whimsy, making it even more entertaining.

Example: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd10xx/EWD1036.PDF


You'll appreciate the Dijkstra font: http://best-font.com/font/Dijkstra47467.html

My alma mater, Eindhoven University of Technology, has a CS department whose direction has very much been shaped by Dijkstra's thinking. While Dijkstra himself was capable of more nuanced thought at times, he raised a whole set of, well, apostles, who took over his ideas and further developed them with a passion not unlike that of religious nuts.

One of the things they also did, was meticulously copy his handwriting. A fun result of this was that I spent a fair amount of my degree watching grey, old bearded men fill up blackboards to the brim with girl's handwritings.

Admittedly, this was a lot more clear and enlightening than someone pressing "play" on a powerpoint, though. I learned a lot.


That font was originally designed by Luca Cardelli. His web site has his originals and an updated version by Reuben Thomas: http://lucacardelli.name/indexartifacts.html (Fonts tab).


I found this because after watching the video I was hoping some of the recipients had put scans online of the originals. To my surprise I found a whole archive of transcriptions.


The transcriptions have a link at the top right corner to the original file, when available.


>"A group [1] of volunteers is undertaking to transcribe the EWDs and other documents to simple HTML files, in order to make them both searchable and accessible to the visually impaired. If you might be interested in lending a hand in this effort, please read this [2]."

It's great to see efforts being made to increase accessibility (if you pardon the pun).

[1] https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/transcrib...

[2] https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/invitatio...


I'd go as far as to say EW Dijkstra is one of the top 5 influental Dutch people of all time.


The other 4 being perhaps Rembrandt, Escher, Erasmus and Spinoza or did you have others in mind?




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