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+<head>
+<title>UK TeX FAQ -- question label triptrap</title>
+</head><body>
+<h3>How can I be sure it&rsquo;s really TeX?</h3>
+<p/>TeX (and Metafont and MetaPost) are written in a
+
+ <a href="FAQ-lit.html">&lsquo;literate&rsquo; programming</a> language called Web
+which is designed to be portable across a wide range of computer
+systems. How, then, is a new version of TeX checked?
+<p/>Of course, any sensible software implementor will have his own suite
+of tests to check that his software runs: those who port TeX and
+its friends to other platforms do indeed perform such tests.
+<p/>Knuth, however, provides a &lsquo;conformance test&rsquo; for both TeX
+(<code>trip</code>) and Metafont (<code>trap</code>).
+
+He characterises these as &lsquo;torture tests&rsquo;: they are designed not to
+check the obvious things that ordinary typeset documents, or font
+designs, will exercise, but rather to explore small alleyways off the
+main path through the code of TeX. They are, to the casual reader,
+pretty incomprehensible!
+<p/>Once an implementation of TeX has passed its <code>trip</code> test, or an
+implementation of Metafont has passed its <code>trap</code> test, then it may
+in principle be distributed as a working version. (In practice, any
+distributor would test new versions against &ldquo;real&rdquo; documents or
+fonts, too; <code>trip</code> and <code>trap</code> don&rsquo;t actually test any
+for real world problems.
+<p/><p/><p>This question on the Web: <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=triptrap">http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=triptrap</a>
+</body>