Fun_People Archive
14 Oct
SquishTeX

Date: Fri, 14 Oct 94 12:49:39 PDT
To: Fun_People
Subject: SquishTeX

Forwarded-by: lanih@info.Berkeley.EDU (J. Lani Herrmann)
Forwarded-by: Margret G Lippert <lippertm@MIT.EDU>
 
  Is your manuscript 213 words too long with the deadline in 10 minutes?  Do
  the last two citations run over the 10-page limit?  Are your lines already
  running off the page?  Is the move from 5-point to 4-point looking
  inevitable?
 
                          *** NO MORE ***
 
  Now, No-Knuthing Technologies presents SquishTeX, the first typesetting
  program with a compression coefficient, $\alpha$, that allows you to
  continuously vary the length of your document from original size to zero
  without ever violating journal submission guidelines.  If $\alpha = 1$,
  SquishTeX performs in the same uncompromising, idyllic fashion as the
  original TeX.
 
  As $\alpha$ is decreased towards 0, SquishTeX uses a variety of proprietary
  devices to cleverly condense your text.
 
          * Substitution of almost-equivalent citations, but with shorter
            names and fewer authors.  Elimination of citations of authors
            unlikely to be on review boards.
 
          * Elision of unnecessarily pompous literary devices: adjectives,
            adverbs and prepositions, for instance.
 
          * Automatic use of thesaurus to find short equivalents of long
            words:
                          relativistic -> fast
                          superlative -> rad
                          1.56 * 10^37 -> a lot
 
          * Elimination of vowels and consonants that seem "obvious enough".
 
          * Wide-scale deletion of mindless drivel.
 
          * Use of the "you can guess the rest" syntactic construct.
 
  Turn a 200 page thesis into an 8 page conference paper ($\alpha = .04$)!
  No document is too complex.  New users will marvel at the sophisticated
  foreign air about their papers!

© 1994 Peter Langston