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author | Norbert Preining <norbert@preining.info> | 2019-09-02 13:46:59 +0900 |
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committer | Norbert Preining <norbert@preining.info> | 2019-09-02 13:46:59 +0900 |
commit | e0c6872cf40896c7be36b11dcc744620f10adf1d (patch) | |
tree | 60335e10d2f4354b0674ec22d7b53f0f8abee672 /info/digests/texline/no11/toulouse.tex |
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diff --git a/info/digests/texline/no11/toulouse.tex b/info/digests/texline/no11/toulouse.tex new file mode 100644 index 0000000000..6756b92f6b --- /dev/null +++ b/info/digests/texline/no11/toulouse.tex @@ -0,0 +1,158 @@ +\centerline{\bf \TeX\ et les Arts Graphiques} +\smallskip +\noindent +GUTenberg finally decided to forsake Paris and travel out +to the provinces for its annual conference. It chose +Toulouse, the aerospace capital of Europe, for this +adventure. The conference took place on May 15--17th, at +the Universit\'e Paul-Sabatier, just outside Toulouse +itself. I can recommend Toulouse. It is a particularly +pleasant city. It's only disadvantage would seem to be +its apparent inaccessibility from Paris (and most other +places in France). (No bad thing I hear you mutter.) + +As usual there were courses before and after the +conference. The `tutorial' with Blanchard \& +Mandell (two French typographers of renown) was +particularly interesting, although it did seem to me that +there are definite `cultural' colourings which make it +difficult to conceive of a `European' typography, except +in a very bland and generalised way. The introduction of +real publishers offered some needed rationalisations. + +The conference itself began on the 16th, with the AGM: +like TUG, GUTenberg almost encourages you to stay away +from this, but as a member I find myself drawn +inexorably, if only to see how such matters are conducted +in another foreign country: like TUG, elections are +discouraged, and the committee\slash board is appointed, +not elected: officers seem to serve for as long as they +want: the floor does not challenge the executive +(except perhaps over the matter of the location of +GUTenberg's file server). + +Nelson Beebe gave a presentation on \TeX\ and TUG. +Michael Ferguson (with bicycle as usual) discussed some of +the aspects of \TeX3, some of its shortcomings, and some +ways ML-\TEX\ users could adopt an upwards compatible path. +Lance Carnes (another frequent attendee of GUTenberg) +scooped the vendors by having his company's versions of +\TeX3 for the pc available in a variety of attractive +shapes and sizes. There can be no doubt that Personal +\TeX\ Inc has created and is marketing a well thought out +and timely range of products. + +One of the highlights of the meeting was the paper by +C\'erin \& Lemaire on colour in \TeX. Some details will +be found in the abstract of their paper, given elsewhere +in \Texline. Collin, of Tr\'ema showed a range of +examples of work which his company had done for clients. +In many cases it would have been hard to see the hand of +\TeX. Tr\'ema did what the client asked, not what \TeX\ +wanted to do. He did agree that there were many +challenges. One of the other highlights was Grimault's +paper which charted the difficulties her company had +encountered in using \LaTeX\ as their typesetting tool. +There was a frustrating blend of misinformation, naivety +and plain bad luck. One of the afternoon's sessions was +given to a discussion on the `possibilities of \TeX'. +This was quickly taken over by Fran\c cois Chahuneau who +came with a wide range of complaints and problems with +using \TeX\ for professional typesetting. Fiery stuff. + +Since most of the papers were printed in the {\it +Cahiers} whose abstracts are printed here, it is best to +concentrate on one particular paper, that of Daniel +Taupin, who had created some superb macros to permit the +typesetting of polyphonic and instrumental music in +\TeX. This was a real tour de force. People who read +music even agreed that the typesetting was quite +acceptable (in other words, looked like what they were +used to). Fran\c cois also came back to talk about +\sgml, but he was much more restrained (who can get hot +and bothered about \sgml?). Larry Siebenmann also gave a +short talk on \LamSTeX. + +In the final session, two individuals were named as +`members of honour' of GUTenberg -- Michael Ferguson (in +recognition of ML-\TEX, which is dostributed by +GUTenberg), and Nicolas Brouard, who did most of the +donkey work in creating, copying and distributing the +GUT89 floppies, a public domain {\sc ms-dos} +implementation. + +I don't know that there was much on `Graphic Arts', and +the turnout, much lower than the Paris meetings, was +disappointing, but nevertheless there were some good +papers and some good discussions. Time keeping could have +been improved, although Bernard Gaulle was stringent in +starting the sessions on time. It would be unfortunate +if GUTenberg were discouraged from venturing out of +Paris again, although next year's meeting will be back in +Paris, on the 28th--30th of May, when the subject will +be scientific and technical publishing. + +As normal with european meetings, accommodation is never +anywhere near the conference venue, nor is it likely that +people will be in the same hotels. Nevertheless there was +still plenty of opportunity to talk to people through the +conference and in the evenings. I was pleased to see that +there were a fair few fellow `anglo-saxons', as english +speakers are quaintly described in France, some exiles +and some just trippers like myself. GUTenberg had a good +international feeling to it this year, perhaps assisted +by the simultaneous translation of the papers into +French and English (as appropriate). Despite the teething +disfficulties of getting people to talk into microphones, +this worked reasonably well. + +There is however one other GUTenberg `issue' that needs +comment. Bernard Gaulle has proposed that TUGboat +should be printed in France as well as the United States. +The principal reason put forward for this is to reduce +the delivery time: the argument is that travel times +within europe are bound to be less than those from the +US, but that production costs in europe, per copy, would +be about the same, once the higher trans-Atlantic freight +charge was taken into account. + +Superficially, this has +some appeal, but there are a number of problems: a second +set of plates would have to be made and sent to the +subsidiary printing location; the print run in the US +would be smaller, incurring higher unit cost there (since +a high proportion of the cost is in set-up, the unit cost +would not be simply proportional to the print run); and +would the delay be minimised? In my experience, mail from +France is no faster than trans-Atlantic mail. The +last edition of TUGboat, 11(2) reached the UK about +a week after it reached addresses in the US. I'm +sceptical that mail from France would be that much +quicker, or that the week is so important. Perhaps there +could be some speed up for those in France, but I doubt +whether any other european countries would notice the +difference. + +I must admit too that I would prefer to +receive the US-printed version rather than a `daughter' +copy, even if I had to wait an extra two or three days. +Since it takes me a long time to read TUGboat, and there +is seldom anything in it which is time-critical, I don't +regard its timing as crucial. I know there are those to +whom it does matter. + +I can envisage a much more exciting project: one which +allows us to exploit some of the features of \TeX: +transmit TUGboat {\it electronically\/} to a `daughter' +location, and allow the plates to be created there for +production. I'm not thinking of each person running files +through their local laser printer -- that's silly: the +paper sizes are wrong, the resolution is limited, there +is no scope to bind it properly: no, transmit {\tt +dvi}. There are problems here, but they are problems +whose solution gives greater credence to \TeX's claims +as an electronic interchange medium. Sending plates +(even if they were scanned at high resolution and +transmitted electronically) advances us nowhere. +\author{\mwc} + |