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authorNorbert Preining <norbert@preining.info>2019-09-02 13:46:59 +0900
committerNorbert Preining <norbert@preining.info>2019-09-02 13:46:59 +0900
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+% Report plus info re distributors of certain products which I hope
+% is accurate: no prices as I am sure they would not be correct for UK.
+%
+% Please feel free to edit it however you like.
+%
+\def\linesep{\vskip\baselineskip}
+\let\sf\relax
+\let\extraspace\quad
+\centerline{\bf \TeX\ Users Group 1987 Meeting }
+\centerline{\bf 2. Is there \TeX \ after Knuth?} % Possible title.
+\medskip\noindent
+The answer from the Seattle meeting was
+loud and clear: Yes! it is not only very alive and well but busy evolving into
+Japanese and Turkish speaking species. It is also becoming slowly accepted by
+the commercial world: both by publishers and typesetters. The majority of the
+grumbles and ``Why on earth did Knuth do\dots '' comments came from the computing
+professionals; i.e.\ those
+whose interests involve using \TeX \ as a programming language or who are
+attempting to unravel and adapt
+macros written by other \TeX nicians. Their consensus was
+roughly as follows: \TeX \ is hard to program in and to debug, and nigh on
+impossible to produce good (according to the fashionable standards) code; to
+this those with wider aesthetic standards often add that \TeX \ enables bad
+typesetting as easily as it does good.
+
+But enough of the gripes, with Seattle putting on its very best in clear, sunny
+weather for us it was impossible to be anything but optimistic: and those who
+could discipline themselves to stay
+in the lecture theatre for long enough heard about the use of
+TeX in publications ranging from the ivory towers of Linguistics
+journals---where
+the publishers had discovered (with some surprise?) that {\tt \$} signs have
+lots of nonmathematical uses, to the mass-media world of {\sf TV--Guide} (the US
+equivalent of TV\kern-2pt /Radio Times) --- where allowing \TeX \ to ``float''
+an advert onto
+the wrong page in just
+one of the 108 editions could result in badness \$150,000!
+(and probably some trade for the legal profession who, in Maryland at least,
+have ``endorsed \TeX\ as their standard for Text Formatting'').
+
+The relationship between \TeX\ and the PostScript
+world was subjected to very close
+scrutiny from many different angles but I shall not attempt to summarize what
+was said as I am still trying to piece together into some semblance of coherence
+the enormous amount of advice and information which I accumulated on the
+subject. It is certainly one on which everyone in the \TeX\ world has a lot
+to say; I wonder if PUG members spend so much time wondering about this
+relationship.
+
+The marketing slots were, on the whole, fairly low-key. Many software
+goodies were
+promised to be ``ready for shipping this fall'' but my experience leads me to
+advise waiting until you know someone else who already
+has been sent the {\it final\/} release version
+before parting with your money. The reasonably-priced products which seemed to
+me to be most likely to warrant further investigation were:
+
+\item{$\bullet$} Publishing Companion from K-Talk Communications:\extraspace claims to
+take documents
+``from WordPerfect to typesetting, completely untouched by human hands'' (other
+wordprocessors, e.g. WORD are to be included ``soon''). K-Talk's flyer, which
+ had been produced using this package, suggests that this software
+exemplifies the criticism I mentioned above: that
+\TeX \ is as good at sloppy typesetting as it is at excellent typesetting;
+however, it may be that the true
+culprit in this case is WordPerfect, which lays no
+claim to aesthetic judgement.
+
+\item{$\bullet$} \TeX WRITE from Docusoft Publishing Technologies:\extraspace this is an
+environment for \TeX\ on an IBM-type PC. I have a pre-release
+version of this and, with the bugs
+removed and the promised features implemented, it could provide
+a very friendly one:
+it is, briefly, a multiple-buffer,
+full-screen editor, with optional menus, which allows files to be \TeX ed,
+Previewed, etc.\
+without leaving it. My major criticism of it is that, as an editor, it is not
+fully adapted to editing \TeX \ files.
+
+\item{$\bullet$} Macro\TeX\ from \TeX nology Inc:\extraspace this is Amy Hendrickson's macro
+package which is in fact a toolkit of independent suites of macros, all of
+which work with Plain \TeX. They cover such areas as Tables, Indexing and
+Glossaries; and the author says that she hopes that the macro
+constructions in
+the package will be accessible by and useful to those who want to write
+their own macros
+to do either similar things or even ``something completely different''.
+
+Those with the odd couple of thousand dollars to spare and a Sun Workstation
+will of course be eagerly awaiting delivery of the software
+no Yuppie typesetter could possibly be without --- The Publisher from Arbortext;
+the pre-release version was happily singing and dancing its way through a
+somewhat limited routine but the (real)-timing of its
+``WYSIWYWouldGetIf\dots\
+show'' was most impressive. Nevertheless, when my boat comes in or I write The
+Program (you know, the one which is able to accurately forcast all
+the financial markets in the
+world and act appropriately before anyone else's does), after the red BMW it
+will have to be a Monotype Lasercomp, together with whatever secret software the
+long-established German typesetting company St\"urtz have developed to give \TeX \
+access to the Aladdin's cave of Monotype fonts, especially those for
+between the \$-signs! Who knows, then I may be able to keep my linguistics
+colleagues supplied with all the diacritics and phonetic symbols they lust
+after, {\it and\/}
+get an empty set symbol which is more to my editor's (the human
+one, that is) taste.
+
+I do not wish to give the impression that the meeting offered none of what has
+been in the past its staple diet: implementations of \TeX; and
+this years fashions in device drivers. There was indeed plenty of information
+from site-coordinators, companies and consultants to satisfy such appetites.
+Also, a movement was started to set standards for printer drivers which led to
+considerable controversy over what such standards should cover. However, the
+meeting gave me the clear message that TUG is becoming more and more a true
+{\it Users\/} Group rather than merely an {\it implementor's\/} group.
+Even clearer though, and I suspect longer lasting, than any such impressions (or
+what I learnt about accents and breathing signs in Modern Greek, and what it
+takes to change a hash table size) will be my memories of the never-ending
+display of sea, lakes, forests and snow-capped mountains which Seattle provided
+for us that week in August.
+% Appendix:
+\linesep\noindent
+Names and addresses of suppliers mentioned above:
+\linesep
+{\obeylines\parindent2em
+\vbox{Arbortext Inc
+416 Fourth Street
+PO Box 7993
+Ann Arbor
+Michigan 48107
+USA
+$+1$ 313 996 3356}
+\linesep\goodbreak
+\vbox{Docusoft Publishing Technologies Inc
+1150 Homer Street
+Vancouver
+British Columbia V6B 2X8
+Canada
+$+1$ 604 687 0354}
+\linesep\goodbreak
+\vbox{K--Talk Communications
+3920 Olentangy River Road
+Columbus
+Ohio 43214
+USA
+$+1$ 614 459 9711}
+\linesep\goodbreak
+\vbox{Seattle Tourist Authority
+City Hall
+Seattle
+Washington
+USA}
+\linesep\goodbreak
+\vbox{\TeX nology Inc
+57 Longwood Avenue \#8
+Brookline
+Massachussets 02146 % spelling??
+USA
+$+1$ 617 738 8029}
+\linesep\goodbreak
+\vbox{Universit\"ats-druckerei H. St\"urtz AG
+Beethovenstra\ss e 5
+D-8700 W\"urzburg I
+DFR
+$+49$ 9 31 385 323} }
+\medskip
+\rightline{\sl Chris Rowley, Open University}
+