A Patgen tutorial from 1993, revisited 28 years later

Yannis Haralambous

Licensed with LPPL 1.3c

1.1 2021/03/29

This the revisited version of a document written in 1993, long before Unicode, the PDF format, the Web, the $n$-th Doctors (for n≥9), eTeX, smartphones, emojis, fake news, COVID, and whatever makes the world we currently live in. As a tutorial, it was utterly bad: it was unclear, missed important information and focalized on (semi-private) jokes. I realized this fact in March 2021, when I tried to use Patgen again after decades of oblivion. Having re-discovered the use of Patgen, which is still as scarcely documented as it was in 1993, I decided to rewrite this tutorial hoping to succeed where I once failed. I ask in advance for your indulgence. Do not hesitate to contact me if parts of it are (still) obscure!