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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/no13/dedham |
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diff --git a/info/digests/texline/no13/dedham b/info/digests/texline/no13/dedham new file mode 100644 index 0000000000..fa8b800cb4 --- /dev/null +++ b/info/digests/texline/no13/dedham @@ -0,0 +1,61 @@ +\title{On the fringe of Boston} +I confess that my enthusiasm for the TUG conference in +Dedham was limited. +In a hotel on the outskirts of Boston; no electronic +access; height of the summer; Red Sox out of town; +first four day meeting; first meeting with `one-day' +tickets; major accent on the publishing fraternity -- +persons in suits. Oh dear. It turned out a whole lot +better. + +The theme of this year's meeting was `Inroads into +Publishing' and stemmed from a proposal made by Lance +Carnes last year to try to arrange a meeting which would +be strongly targetted towards the publishing industry. +This was seen as part of a longer term policy to ensure +the future of \TeX\ by promoting it to a wider audience. +The first two days were more strongly oriented towards +the traditional publishing business than the others. The +conference proper started with a keynote address from Nico +Poppelier from Elsevier. In general this was a good talk, +but I found it singularly unfortunate at a forum where +there was an attempt to convince and impress the +conservative business world, that Nico should take time +out to list his set of `needed changes' to \TeX. This +theme, of `how shall we change \TeX' was one which was +repeated again and again throughout the conference. +There is undoubtedly a body of opinion which sees the need +for change. However, as Mike Spivak's {\sl Contrarian +View} shows, there are opposing views too. + +This meeting again took the pattern of `networking +lunches'. The notion is that the lunch tables are labelled +with various topics and you go to the table with your +favourite topic. It is certainly a useful idea for a +meeting at which many people may be new, and who whant to +locate others with similar interests. An innovation this +year was the introduction of panels. To +my surprise it worked remarkably well. There were a few +good opinionated panellists. Reverting to tradition, +Personal \TeX\ provided the wine and cheese reception, but +another innovation -- the wine didn't run out. I don't +know if the parallel sessions were an innovation, but they +were a pain. Memo to conference programmers: {\sc don't +have parallel sesssions!} + +The other component were the workshops. I felt sorry for +Chris Carruthers {\sl Interpreting \LaTeXsl\ Error +Messages}, who had a group including Frank Mittelbach, +who really ought to know enough not to make \LaTeX\ +errors. + +To hand out a few honours: probably the best function was +the Clambake, sponsored by ArborText and Micro Programs +-- all those lobsters! The best content -- Yannis +Haralambous; the best panel -- historical roundtable. But +I didn't get to everything. + +What about the bowling you will ask. Candle\-pin; +ten pin, with very much smaller balls (no holes!) and an +odd set of rules. But it was an interesting challenge. So +in the end it all worked out quite well.\author{Malcolm |