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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 /usergrps/uktug/baskervi/8_1/editorial.tex |
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diff --git a/usergrps/uktug/baskervi/8_1/editorial.tex b/usergrps/uktug/baskervi/8_1/editorial.tex new file mode 100644 index 0000000000..493b006af8 --- /dev/null +++ b/usergrps/uktug/baskervi/8_1/editorial.tex @@ -0,0 +1,220 @@ +\def\PDF{PDF} +\def\textsmaller#1{#1} +\title{Editorial and News} +\author{Sebastian Rahtz} +\begin{article} +It seems a long time since I last wrote a \BV\ editorial, but it is no +less pleasurable to be able, once again, to share some \TeX ery with +you. ``Why'', however, the keen-eyed reader will ask, ``is this \BV\ +volume \emph{8}, and not \emph{7} still?''. For an explanation of the +\uktug\ committee's decisions regarding this, I refer you to the +report by the outgoing Chairman, Robin Fairbairns, following this editorial. +You'll also find information about other glories the committee has +planned for the members. + +\section{Why \protect\TeX?} +Just after the New Year, I had the pleasure of travelling to India for +the first meeting of the Indian \TeX{} Users Group (a report on this +trip can be found elsewhere in this \BV). In the opening session, I +tried to give an explanation of why \TeX{} was still relevant, and it +seems appropriate to offer the points I made to UK readers as well. + +When Donald Knuth started \TeX, he thought he was undertaking the +simple task of writing a typesetting program which he could use to +prepare volumes of his monumental series,\emph{The Art of Computer + Programming}; in the event, it called for 10 years work, and the +creation of not only \TeX, but a companion font-drawing program, +\MF, and the Computer Modern family of fonts. During the years of +development, Knuth made some significant decisions: +\begin{itemize} +\item He decided to place the program in the public domain for all to + use; not only was this generous in itself, but it prompted many + people to try it, confident in the knowledge that they could find + out what it was doing, that it had no secrets. +\item He worked on the design substantially alone, albeit with a group + of graduate students and the help of research grants; + this meant that the main \TeX{} programs have + a single architecture, and are to all intents and purposes free of + bugs, the work of an individual not a team. +\item Knuth listened to feedback, and encouraged it. This led to the + creation of the \TeX\ Users Group in about 1980, which did much to + popularize the software. +\item He wrote the programs using his \texttt{WEB} system of literate + programming, in which the program code and its documentation are + inextricably woven. The closely-documented nature of the code has + made it possible for others to understand it. He even + \emph{published} the source code in a book, an almost unprecedented + action. +\item He did not commit himself to a specific output device (unlike + \textsf{troff}, which did not achieve the same success as \TeX), but + separated out the `driver' functionality into external programs, by + defining \TeX's output as a neutral device-independent format. +\item He recognized that if the program were to have a long + shelf-life, he could not commit himself to the graphical and colour + capabilities of the period. A conscious decision was made to + \emph{omit} any specific functionality of this kind, and instead to + provide an all-purpose \verb|\special| command +\item Lastly, Knuth froze \TeX{} when he felt it was complete + enough. This means that it stays forever as a fixed reference point, + generating the same output from the same input and exhibiting no + known errors. This allows some to build on it with confidence, + others to write their documents knowing that they will always be + able to processs them. +\end{itemize} + +But things have moved on since Knuth wrote \TeX; nowadays the talk is +of desktop-publishing, word-processing packages, HTML, the Internet, PDF, SGML +--- was it an anachronism to start a new \TeX{} Users Group in India in +1998? I believe it was not, and I have followed Don Knuth's +favourite game of playing with numbers to explain why. Since this is +(just) 1998, I have attempted to find 9.8 reasons why \TeX{} is still +relevant today, and why the Indian group will have much to work on. +I will go over my 9 reasons as reflections on the way \TeX{} +and its users are \emph{evolving} to meet today's needs. + + +\begin{enumerate} +\item[1] The Internet. \TeX{} users (well, not all of them, + since it makes sense only if you use structured markup) can interact + with the Internet in a variety of ways: +\begin{itemize} +\item Converting \LaTeX{} into HTML, using \textsf{latex2html}, + \textsf{Tex4ht}, or a variety of other programs. +\item Having \LaTeX{} read directly by a browser add-on, of which + IBM's \textsf{techxplorer} seems to be the most fully developed. +\item Producing Portable Document Format for display using Acrobat + Reader inside a Web browser. Using Han The Thanh's \TeX{} variant, + pdf\TeX{}, or a dvi to PostScript program with Acrobat Distiller, we + can make PDF files; even better, we can add macros such as my \LaTeX{} + \textsf{hyperref} package, or Hans Hagen's Con\TeX{}t, and + automatically produce PDF of a richness unsurpassed by almost any + other program. +\item There is also now XML making a very welcome appearance in the + Web world, and its maths application, MathML. Can we hope for a happy + co-existence between MathML and \TeX? +\end{itemize} +\item[2] Unicode, and its superset standard ISO 10646-1. 16-bit encoding + is a reality, and is alive and well in the \TeX{} world, with the + extension of \TeX{} called + Omega, by John Plaice and Yannis Haralambous. Among many other + things, this will allow Indian \TeX{} users to typeset scripts such as + Malayalam to a high standard without recourse to pre-processors or + any limitations on transcriptions. +\item[3] Font control. Perhaps we are not in an ideal situation with + regard to font encoding and usage in normal \TeX, but we are getting there. + While in the \LaTeX{} world T1 encoding is widely accepted, we can + hope for similar agreement on 8-bit maths font encoding. +\item[4] Pictures. Has the \TeX{} user ever had such a rich variety of + ways to draw high-quality pictures? Choose from MetaPost, XYpic, or + PSTricks for general purpose drawing, Musix\TeX{} for music, + PPCH\TeX{} for chemisty, FeynMF for Feynman diagrams, or dozens of + others. +\item[5] Macro packages. With the decline of most of the original + plain-based macro packages put together in the mid-late 1980s, + \LaTeX, with its huge collection of add-on packages, now has a + slightly unhealthy domination of the \TeX-using world. Perhaps 1998 + will be the time for some new competitors, such as CON\TeX{}t, to + start a serious challenge? +\item[6] \TeX{} extensions. For a good many \TeX{} users, all that is + really needed is the Plain format, and a few (just a few) tweaks to + \TeX{} to solve some of those nagging programming issues. For some + other users, what is needed is a complete re-implementation of \TeX{} + in Java, to provide the basis for serious experimentation with + modularisation and spreading resources across the Internet. The + first group can rejoice, as the second version of $\varepsilon$-\TeX{} + is almost released, offering a variety of new features, without + compromising \TeX's integrity in any way. The second group can also + start to uncross their fingers, as the NTS group will start work on + a rewrite of \TeX{} in Java during 1998. +\item[7] \TeX{} implementations. Does any \TeX{} user still need to + compromise on their implementation? With the standard Unix web2c + implementation now available for DOS, Windows 32, Amiga, and any + Unix platform, healthy competition in Windows 32 from MikTeX, ably + maintained shareware Macintosh systems (OzTeX and CMacTeX), it almost + seems an embarassment of riches to mention the commercial Y\&Y TeX, + Textures, and Scientific Workplace, each offering very significant + advantages. +\item[8] The relationship with SGML. We are reaching an understanding + of how to use \TeX{} as a backend formatter for SGML, and also how + to use it as a front-end, by converting \TeX{} mss to SGML. Not an + easy area to work in, perhaps, but \TeX{} can hold its head high, + and say that it is not afraid to work with SGML. +\item[9] DSSSL, the ISO 10179 standard for a `Document Style Semantics + and Specification Language', is now not only a reality, but in daily + use, thanks to James Clark's free implementation, \textsf{jade}. + By separating style specification from paragraph makeup, this + keeps a firm place for \TeX{} in the universe, since DSSSL + implementations (or the subsets, such as XSL, which may be implemented + for the Web) need a batch-oriented formatting engine to assist them. +\item[9.8] User groups. Not a whole reason, because we do not yet have + user groups to help \TeX{} users all over the world. But by adding the + Indian \TeX{} Users Group, we are making a significant + contribution to filling that missing 20\%. +\end{enumerate} +But a word of warning to conclude --- let us not take \TeX{} into a +ghetto. Let it work \emph{alongside} other tools and technologies, not +against them. + +\section{The 1997 AGM meeting} +Those members who had the opportunity, or good sense, to come to the +\uktug{} annual general meeting had a rare treat of listening to five +very different, but all entertaining and interesting, speakers: +\begin{enumerate} +\item Peter Flynn talked about what it \emph{means} to archive + documents, a very salutary reminder that there is more to preserving + your work than occasionally copying \texttt{*.tex} on to a floppy + disk\ldots +\item Hans Hagen described his work in developing the hugely-powerful + \TeX{} macro package Con\TeX t, and some of the ways he uses it to produce + interactive \PDF{} documents, carefully designed for screen use; +\item Timothy Murphy meditated on \TeX{} and friends redone in Java, + and offered a compelling vision of a network-enabled, distributed, + \TeX{} world; +\item Han The Thanh gave an introduction to pdf\TeX, the \TeX{} + variant which produces \PDF{} instead of \DVI{}; +\item Philip Taylor described the mouth-watering programmer's + enhancements to be provided in $\varepsilon$-\TeX, and the plans for + \acro{NTS}. +\end{enumerate} +\BV{} plans to bring you a flavour of all these presentations. In this +issue we print articles by Phil Taylor and Han The Thanh; Peter Flynn and Tim +Murphy should follow in the next \BV, and we hope to devote an entire +issue to Con\TeX t. + +\section{\TeX{} Live 3} +We are preparing to make a new \TeX\ Live CD-ROM, with an anticipated +release date of mid March 1998. It will be distributed to all \uktug\ +members. The changes and enhancements since last year include: + +\begin{itemize} +\item Updated macro, font and documentation packages +\item December 97 \LaTeX +\item Improved install scripts +\item Unix, Win32, DOS (DJGPP) and Amiga binaries based on web2c 7.2 +\item WIN95/NT system runnable directly from the CD-ROM +\item Omega, $\varepsilon$-TeX and pdfTeX for Unix and Win32 +\item Latest CMacTeX, OzTeX, and MikTeX distributions +\item Addition of the extra utilities +\texttt{lacheck}, +\texttt{dvidvi}, +\texttt{dtl}, +\texttt{psutils}, +\texttt{t1utils}, +\texttt{dviselect}, +\texttt{dviconcat} and +\texttt{TeX4ht} + for all the Unix and Win32 binary sets +\item The full Con\TeX t macro package +\item Joliet CD-ROM support, so that win32 users see long/mixed-case + filenames +\end{itemize} +We hope that these improvements make an attractive package for +members, and take another step towards the painless free \TeX{} +installations many of us dream of. + +\end{article} + + + + + |