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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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+\def\PS{\textsc{PostScript}}
+\title{Malcolm\rq{}s Gleanings}
+\author[Malcolm Clark]{Malcolm Clark\\\texttt{m.clark@warwick.ac.uk}}
+\begin{Article}
+\newcommand{\TL}{{\em \TeX\kern-0.1emline}}
+\subsection{Rest in peace}
+For a number of years, the \lq{}maverick\rq{} (so described by Adrian \lq{}no relation\rq{}
+Clark) occasional publication \TL\ made its infrequent appearance. The last
+issue, number 14, came out in February 1992. As the erstwhile editor I now
+reluctantly admit that it has ceased publication. I had hoped that it might
+survive to a ripe old age (like issue 20), but a variety
+of reasons compel me to abandon it. \TL\ was always a free
+publication, so at least I don\rq{}t feel that there is a vast
+subscription paying audience out there which will feel aggrieved
+at not receiving the next edition. After all, part of the deal
+was supposed to be that if you wrote for it you were then
+on the subscription list. To the list of contributors, sorry,
+your subscriptions have lapsed. To the rest of you, well, you
+know you get what you pay for.
+
+There are now plenty of other ways to disseminate information about
+\TeX\ and family. Estimable publications like \BV, \emph{Lettres
+ GUTenberg} (no, not \emph{Lettres fran\c cais}), TTN and the Dutch
+ group\rq{}s MAPS more than adequately fill any holes that might have
+ been left by \TL, and have the great virtue of being related to
+ various groups. I hope that this encourages people to belong to
+ those groups.
+
+Of course there are other ways to spread the word. The electronic
+distribution of information is an obvious alternative. Why, for
+example, don\rq{}t we have all these journals and newsletters (or annals)
+up on WWW (World Wide Web)? TTN is already available in electronic
+form, but I think I can see the day when it is available in (say) \PS\
+form so that I can just call it up on the screen in front of me. The
+problem here lies in one of the recurrent problems of material
+available on the Internet -- who would bother subscribing to TUG or
+the UK group if one of the key benefits of membership, the
+publications, was already available electronically? I still prefer
+bits of paper (I can easily take them home, read them in the bath,
+make notes on them -- and the batteries rarely run flat), but paper
+may be a luxury we can\rq{}t really afford. I\rq{}m moderately hopeful that
+gadgets like the Sony DiscMan, together with emerging technologies
+like Adobe\rq{}s Acrobat may make portable electronic books a realistic
+alternative.
+
+
+\subsection{Carousel?}
+A couple of years ago, Adobe Systems started
+to introduce their \lq{}Multiple Masters\rq{} technology. At the time it was
+not wholly clear what their agenda really was. Multiple Masters allow
+you to retain the \lq{}look and feel\rq{} of a printed (or screen) document
+when you do not have access to the \lq{}correct\rq{} fonts. Imagine you had
+been sent \BV\ electronically, but without the embedded Baskerville
+fonts which are part of its corporate identity. Exactly what would
+happen when you tried to view it or print it depends on lots of
+things: at the worst you might not be able to view it at all;
+alternatively you might have some substitution which retained
+character widths, or character positions. The effect is that you would
+end up with something which was frankly unpleasant. The content would
+still be the \BV\ you have come to love, but its appearance would be
+well below the standard which we have come to expect.
+
+Adobe\rq{}s solution was to develop a scheme where two font
+families were introduced which would attempt to emulate
+the characteristics of the \lq{}missing\rq{} font(s). All this means is
+that they would have the same character widths and heights
+(slants, weights or whatever) so that the colour of the
+\lq{}page\rq{} would be similar. Of course, there was no intention that
+this would be an exact reproduction -- just that it would preserve
+characteristics like line breaks and the other physical attributes
+of the page. The two base fonts introduced were Minion and Myriad
+(now renamed Adobe Sans and Adobe Serif, I think). These were
+placed in the public domain.
+
+Originally Adobe\rq{}s marketing people (probably to put us off the true
+scent) were suggesting that this was the start of a wide range of
+Multiple Master fonts. In passing, this is where Yannis Haralambous in
+the last edition of \BV\ was misled. He states that -- \lq{}These (MM) are
+extremely complex and memory consuming, but still much poorer than
+\MF\ created fonts\rq{}: this may be true, but it is totally irrelevant
+and misses the point entirely; this is not what was going on at
+all. It was all a prelude to Acrobat, or, as it was originally
+code-named, Carousel. Multiple Masters were simply an enabling
+technology which had to be in place before Acrobat could be
+released. I had originally supposed that part of the reason behind MM
+was font licensing. The copyright of fonts depends on the country in
+which you sit. See, for example, Chuck Bigelow\rq{}s article in \TUB\
+(\lq{}Notes on typeface protection\rq{}, vol.7(3), 1986). It is by no means
+certain that you have the right to transmit the details of any
+arbitrary font electronically: by doing so you may be in breach of
+copyright (there is no use pleading that Bodoni has been dead for more
+than 50 years, or Baskerville for that matter -- they never held the
+copyright anyway). Another reason not to do this is that encoding or
+embedding the fonts takes up an enormous amount of space. If you are
+transmitting a book sized document, the extra for fonts is no big
+issue: if you are transmitting something relatively short, it could be
+the biggest item. There are therefore legal and practical reasons for
+this route.
+
+Once we have an Acrobat document, it can be transmitted electronically
+without difficulty, and can be read by anyone with an Acrobat
+reader. Such readers seem destined to be made available with every
+machine, virtually as part of the operating system. It no longer
+matters what software was used to prepare the original -- you will
+still be able to see what the author intended, without having that
+software yourself. There are other little advantages: the one I like
+most is the post-it notes that you can attach to the document. For
+example, this could mean that as an author I send my Acrobat document
+(which of course started life as \TeX\ or \LaTeX) to my publisher,
+whose editors would annotate via the post-it notes. I then revise the
+returned document. It all starts to sound very plausible. And yes, it
+does work.
+
+Another pleasing feature is the ability to search the Acrobat
+documents. This works reasonably well, although, as you might expect,
+ligatures (and I dare say, diacriticals) don\rq{}t yet work properly. Of
+course, years and years ago you could search a dvi file for text
+strings with ArborText\rq{}s previewer, with just the same sorts of
+restrictions. I think it is always good when the innovations
+introduced through \TeX\ and its associated products becomes
+incorporated into mainstream technologies like this. It shows how
+\TeX\ leads the way.
+
+\subsection{Knuth, the video}
+
+Donald Knuth is now available on video: University Video
+Communications, based at Stanford, now have a tape of Knuth\rq{}s
+\lq{}Computer musings\rq{} in which he discusses the One-Way Associative
+Law. Sounds just the thing for a stocking filler next Christmas.
+
+
+\subsection{Sheep stealing in Barnet}
+From time to time a chestnut re-appears. A half remembered quotation
+from Frederic Goudy is trotted out: \lq{}\lq{}anyone who would letterspace
+lower case would steal sheep\rq{}\rq{}. There are many who concur with the
+spirit of this statement, but unfortunately it isn\rq{}t what Fred
+said. Matters have been confused recently by the publication of a book
+by Erik Spiekermann \& E M Ginger entitled \lq{}Stop Stealing Sheep\rq{},
+which does contain the erroneous quotation. Fortunately they also
+print the correct version. What Goudy actually said was \lq{}\lq{}anyone who
+would letterspace black letter would steal sheep\rq{}\rq{}. Where does that
+leave us? In \BV\ 3(2) I noted that Eric Gill suggests letterspacing
+lower case as a substitute for italics. While I know of no rumours
+that Gill actually {\em stole\/} sheep, that might have been the least
+of their worries.
+
+
+\subsection{Public domain does not mean user unfriendly}
+
+In another surprising outburst (one by-product of the remarkable
+mud-wrestling competition held with Berthold Horn, judged by most
+observers to result in a draw), Yannis Haralambous suggests in a
+footnote that \lq{}public domain software is never as user-friendly as
+commercial\rq{}: I beg to differ. I have the doubtful pleasure of a
+Windows machine on my desk. One of its few really excellent pieces of
+software is Pegasus, a Windows-based electronic mailer. It is simple,
+straightforward, and almost a pleasure to use. A true pleasure to use
+is Eudora, another mailer, on the Macintosh. Both of these are public
+domain, and I challenge anyone to carp significantly about their user
+interface.
+
+In fact, I\rq{}m rather surprised by Yannis\rq{} assertion that \lq{}important
+innovations (in \TeX\ etc) have always appeared first in public domain
+software\rq{}: I have only to think back to the release of \TeX\ on the
+pc: this was not in the public domain but was the result of
+significant and independent work by Lance Carnes and David Fuchs --
+maybe it was not an important innovation, but to me, freeing \TeX\
+from the restrictions of academic mainframe computers and releasing it
+to the personal computer level seems a quantum leap forward. Even
+Yannis\rq{} beloved virtual fonts were released first by ArborText, many
+years before they became commonplace. There are countless other
+examples around -- think of Blue Sky\rq{}s innovative Lightning Textures,
+or Michael Vulis\rq{} V\TeX. This continued denigration of the importance
+which commercial vendors have had in the adoption and spread of \TeX\
+smacks of a re-writing of easily verifiable history. They were there:
+they supported us all for many years until public domain versions of
+the program finally became robust and reliable. I believe they still
+have a place in the development of \TeX\ and \TeX\ tools. I just hope
+they don\rq{}t get so frustrated by the lack of understanding and respect
+they receive that they abandon the game entirely.
+
+
+\subsection{Hints \& Tips}
+
+At the first meeting that this group held at RHBNC one of the \lq{}events\rq{}
+was a \LaTeX\ tables workshop. One of the problems that always comes
+up with tables is the incredible contortions that you have to go
+through to make the floating tables appear just where it is that you
+want. It would be naive to assume that this is going to be one of the
+problems that will disappear with \LaTeX3. In the first place it is
+extremely difficult to come up with a sensible and coherent set of
+rules which describe the variety of conditions and exceptions to
+figure and table placement; in the second place, the \LaTeX\ defaults
+are perhaps not the best chosen. At least we can do something about
+that, although there are rather too many parameters to be able to come
+up with a definitive optimal set of values. However, at the RHBNC
+meeting, Geeti Granger of John Wiley \& Sons provided a set of values
+which she suggests had been used with more success at John Wiley than
+the defaults. She suggested the values in the following table:
+
+\begin{tabular}{lrr}
+parameter & default & suggested \\
+\hline
+topnumber & 2 & 2 \\
+bottomnumber & 1 & 2 \\
+totalnumber & 3 & 4 or 2 \\
+dbltopnumber & 2 & 2 \\
+\verb|\topfraction| & 0.7 & 0.9 \\
+\verb|\bottomfraction| & 0.3 & 0.5 \\
+\verb|\textfraction| & 0.2 & 0.1 \\
+\verb|\floatpagefraction| & 0.5 & 0.8 \\
+\verb|\dbltopfraction| & 0.7 & 0.9 \\
+\verb|\dblfloatpagefraction| & 0.5 & 0.8
+\end{tabular}
+\end{Article}
+\endinput
+