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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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+\title{An Informal Review of TUG '93: July 26th--30th, Aston, Birmingham UK}
+\author[Kees van der Laan]{Kees van der Laan\\Dutch \TeX\ Users Group}
+\begin{article}
+
+
+\section{Highlights}
+\begin{itemize}
+\item Announcement of \LaTeX2.9e; the {\em \LaTeX\ Companion} book
+ will be available in the fall, which contains among other items, the
+ NFSS2 documentation
+\item NTS: organizational and technical issues were surveyed
+\item Y\&Y's scalable outline fonts
+\item Adobe's Acrobat, and PDF (portable document format),
+ demoed by Doug Henderson (Blue Sky Research, and Adobe $\beta$-tester)
+\item Tutorials: What is \LaTeX?, Flavours of \TeX, Virtual fonts,
+ all for free
+\item Greenwade's CTAN: Comprehensive \TeX\ Archive Network, released
+\item The {\sl TUGly Telegraph\/} spread the news (a mini
+ conference newspaper)
+\end{itemize}
+
+This report\footnote{Cut down for inclusion in \BV; a fuller version
+will be published in MAPS, the journal of the Dutch \TeX\ Users
+Group.} contains the main issues as perceived by the author. The
+idea is to get the flavour and my view of the good items across, at
+the expense of completeness.
+
+\section{Introduction}
+The meeting of the organized \TeX\ Users of the year was TUG '93 at
+Aston. It attracted some 165 participants, with a few from
+financially diasadvantaged countries, thanks to a bursary fund. Aston
+campus is pleasantly located near the centre of Birmingham, Brum for
+short. A rich variety of courses was offered before and after the
+conference. In general the program offered nice presentations,
+workshops, panels and the like, with the vendor booths fewer in number
+than usual, Blue Sky Research being sadly absent because of being
+informed too late. Despite this, to attend the conference was a real
+thrill. Much attention was paid to details; for example every badge
+contained a nice proverb, not forgetting the superb logo. In general
+all was done by creative and playful minds. Next to the lecture room
+there was a discussion lounge---with among other things some computers
+with e-mail and FTP facilities, such that participants could read
+their e-mail and exchange files---and a vendor booth, alias lounge,
+for display of materials brought along by TUG and the various LUGs.
+
+\section{Conference}
+For the most it was a one-stream schedule. Along with the program we
+obtained a copy of the pre-proceedings, which be published in \TUB\
+14.3. Prior to the conference there were the free tutorials: `What is
+\LaTeX\ all about?', `Flavours of \TeX', and `Virtual fonts'. During
+the conference we had workshops about MakeIndex, \BibTeX, and virtual
+fonts. And there were ample course offerings before and after the
+conference.
+
+In the next section attention is paid to the highlights neglecting
+the day-to-day sequence of events as well as the session titles.
+
+\subsection{Keynotes}
+The keynotes were: Jackowski and Ry\'cko---detailing what happens at
+the beginning and at the end of a paragraph; Christina Thiele---about
+the future of \TeX\ and TUG; and Joachim Lammarsch---presenting his
+view on the historical and organisational issues related to NTS, the
+New Typesetting System. Later Phil Taylor---the technical director of
+the project---aptly complemented this with the technical aspects. A
+nice example of international cooperation.
+
+\subsection{Presentations}
+\begin{itemize}
+\item Michael Doob's paper about the practical use of virtual fonts
+ was very illuminating. Related to this was the work of
+ Alan Jeffrey for manipulating {\em vpl\/} files.
+
+\item It was rumoured that John Plaice's $\Omega$-\TeX\ will be a nice
+ extension of \TeX. It is difficult to overlook its virtues or its
+ impact.
+
+\item Derick Wood's theoretical model of tables was very intriguing.
+ The burning question in here is whether we can develop something
+ like normal specification and transformation to the clearest
+ formatted represention (semi)automatically.
+
+\item Daniel Taupin surprised us all with a new aspect of his \TeX\
+ work: \TeX\ and Metafont working together to produce maps. Later,
+ and separately, he also reported about new developments in
+ Music\TeX.
+
+\item Martin Bryan's Guide to DSSSL was a bit too theoretical. Upon
+ request he assured us that this extension is there mainly to handle
+ so-called active documents.
+
+\item Michel Lavaud preceded his As\TeX\ lecture by some analogies of
+ the \TeX\ language with natural language---both ambiguous and
+ `dangerous'---and with the FORTRAN language---both stable, but
+ deficient. The latter has gained a firm place within the scientific
+ work desk, despite its deficiences and other imperfections.
+
+\item Laurent Siebenmann in one of his papers proposed a new method for
+ handling the spacing around in-line math.
+
+\item Roger Hunter discussed {\em Scientific Word} and
+ emphasized that the future of \TeX\ has all to do
+ with better user interfaces. It is fun to remember all the
+ various items people have prophesied to be essential for the
+ future of \TeX. At the user as well as the language level.
+
+\item W\l odek Bzyl lectured about the use of literate programming
+ tools to build upon other work: \TUB\ style customization via change
+ files and pretty printing of \TeX\ code, along with providing an
+ index. By this approach the styles of the GUST bulletin make use of
+ the experience embodied in the \TUB\ style files, with GUST's
+ modifications easily added. Really a sensible approach and worthy of
+ being studied and followed by other editors.
+
+\item Berthold Horn dwelled upon the paucity of math fonts ready for
+ use with \TeX, and a checklist to counteract this phenomenon.
+ A very lucid and scholarly paper.
+
+\item George Greenwade made the CTAN (Comprehensive \TeX\ Archive
+ Network) go public. A quantum leap!
+
+\item At the macro writing level we had Jonathan Fine's ``Finite
+ State Automata in \TeX'' and my ``Syntactic Sugar'', and ``Sorting
+ within \TeX''. The syntactic sugar paper also touches upon the
+ software engineering aspects of \TeX\ macro writing.
+
+ \item Very intriguing was Mary Dyson's paper about teaching
+ typography, as a spin-off of the DIDOT project. It has
+ all to do with getting your priorities right; don't sub-optimize!
+ In essence the issues relevant to Electronic Publishing were
+ presented in the right order.
+\item Richard Southall elaborated on his `buses and weirdness' effects
+when using \TeX, naively. I'm hoping that this paper will finally
+appear in print.
+\end{itemize}
+
+\section{LUGs}
+Only CyrTUG and Ukraine TUG (officially to be founded in the
+ autumn) talked in public about their history and revealed their
+plans. Both will have autumn meetings, open for the \TeX\ community at
+large to attend.
+
+\section{Upcoming, or go where the action is}
+For next year the working idea is to have Euro\TeX\ '94 organized by
+GUST in Poland. TUG '94 will be in Santa Barbara, TUG '95 in Florida,
+and TUG '96 in Europe again. And in the meantime the autumn is crowded
+with meetings: Ukraine TUG,\footnote{At the moment of writing this
+report we received the sad news that their leader Yuri Melnichuk has
+passed away, due to a heart attack.} CyrTuG (early October), the
+Nordic and NTG's November meetings, next to DANTE's regular and cosy
+Stammtisch, \ldots, and GUST in the spring: watch out for the calendar
+in TUGboat.
+
+
+\section{Conclusion}
+Meeting people and stimulating each other---that is what
+conferences are for. This was a particularly good one.
+
+Thanks to you all!
+\end{article}
+
+