summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/usergrps/uktug/baskervi/5_1/clark.tex
diff options
context:
space:
mode:
Diffstat (limited to 'usergrps/uktug/baskervi/5_1/clark.tex')
-rw-r--r--usergrps/uktug/baskervi/5_1/clark.tex181
1 files changed, 181 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/usergrps/uktug/baskervi/5_1/clark.tex b/usergrps/uktug/baskervi/5_1/clark.tex
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..68b2dd595f
--- /dev/null
+++ b/usergrps/uktug/baskervi/5_1/clark.tex
@@ -0,0 +1,181 @@
+\title{Malcolm's Gleanings}
+\author[Malcolm Clark]{Malcolm Clark\\
+\texttt{m.clark@warwick.ac.uk}}
+\begin{Article}
+\section{Whom the gods would destroy\dots}
+At a recent (networking) conference I received a pamphlet about an
+organisation named Dante (Delivery of Advanced Networking Technology
+to Europe). What or whom do you associate with this name? Naturally I
+think first of Dante Alighieri and his romance with Beatrice, then the
+firm who presses my favourite extra virgin olive oil, and lastly our
+German sister \TeX\ organisation. I was therefore fascinated to hear a
+bit of unsupported scurrilous gossip which maintained that the German
+\textsc{Dante} were challenging this new network organisation to change its
+name --- presumably to avoid any possible confusion. This story is
+probably untrue. Another piece of unsupported news was that \textsc{Dante} was
+reluctant to support Haralambous' and Plaice's Omega project since it
+was thought to compete with NTS. Such a sad and blinkered view is
+clearly not worthy of the largest \TeX\ organisation in Europe, which
+boasts openly of its financial health. This gossip must therefore be
+malicious and\slash or mischievous. Expunge it from your minds!
+
+\section{Garnered gleanings}
+In a flier headed \emph{Quality without compromise} the Royal
+Society announces its intention of using \TeX\ to handle papers for
+\emph{Proceedings: Mathematical and Physical Sciences}. The plan
+seems to be to encourage authors to submit \TeX\ files on disk. Wonder
+why they don't get an email link? A positive intention is to reduce
+publication times, with a `fast stream' time of only 15 months. I'm
+sure we wish them luck.
+
+And in the Royal Statistical Society's \emph{News} the virtues of
+the 4\TeX\ CD is extolled, and is given a `best buy' rating. Allan
+Reese (for it was he) omits to reveal how one might obtain this gem
+(albeit flawed), and more important, misses an opportunity to bring
+this group to the attention of those purveyors of lies and damn lies.
+
+\section{Chimes at midnight}
+I have a weakness for the late Orson Welles. I doubt if there is any
+of his work that I can say that I didn't enjoy to some (positive)
+extent. Even his last rambling and chaotic film, \emph{Don Quixote},
+has moments of poetry and grace which provide echoes with his youthful
+output. There is an obvious identification between Quixote and Welles.
+The film was a labour of love which spanned something like twenty
+years, and absorbed the proceeds of less `honourable' projects, like
+those sherry ads. In the end, it was unfinished, andit was his
+widow(?) who completed the film. To adopt the mantle of the venerable
+Don is a perilous undertaking, and perhaps the relative lack of
+success that Welles enjoyed in the latter part of his career was a
+response to this identification. What then can we expect for another
+who has adopted this same mantle, Don Hosek? Don, or as he is now,
+D~A~Hosek, is the prime mover of \emph{Quixote Digital Typography} (I
+suspect he \emph{is} the entirety of QDT\dots). The latest venture of
+QDT is \emph{Serif} (sub-titled \emph{The Magazine of Type \&
+ Typography}). This is a quarterly magazine, and so far I have seen
+only the inaugural issue which was published late in 1994.
+
+What is \emph{Serif} about? I've lost the prospectus (which was
+interesting enough to encourage me to part with some money for a
+subscription), so we depend on the contents to guide us. Oddly there is
+no manifesto or statement of aims in the magazine. The contents include
+discussions of typefaces, analogue and digital, a taxonomy of
+letterforms, examination of the output of some contemporary foundries,
+book reviews\dots\ On the whole quite varied and potentially
+different. QDT has managed to acquire a number of quite
+notable type-people to contribute: Robert Bringhurst (who I hadn't
+heard of as a typographer, despite an excellent pedigree, but who I
+recall as a poet), Charles Bigelow (probably known to \TeX ies under
+the guise of `Bigelow and Holmes', joint creators of Lucida), Gunnar
+Swanson (a frequent contributor to the \texttt{typo-l} list server),
+and of course, Don Hosek himself.
+
+I have to admit I found the contributions hard to thole. There was an
+air of introspective, insider exclusivity which I found frankly
+irritating. The whole thing came across as either precious or
+precocious. Take for example the insistence of describing Trump
+Medieval as Trump Medi\"eval. In German it is often necessary to
+indicate a `missing' `a' with a dieresis or umlaut. It isn't needed in
+English where both medieval and mediaeval are acceptable (according to
+the OED). Nor is this a form used by either Linotype or Monotype in
+their catalogues. So why use it here, unless as a form of snobbery?
+Maybe I'm just irredeemably ignorant. So much read like Irene Handl's
+famous send up of a Critics' Forum, although I would change her quote
+from `there was a certain ragged earnestness, combined with a subtlety,
+about it, which I found irresistible' to `entirely resistible', and I'm
+uncertain about the subtlety. Maybe that's it: maybe it \emph{is} a
+send up --- but how elaborate. No, I suspect that we are being expected
+to take it earnestly.
+
+Probably there is much good stuff here (although I'd take issue with
+describing photography as `modern' in 1890: the daguerreotype dates
+from 1839, and the glass negative from 1851), but it seems designed to
+impress rather than to inform. But who is it intended to impress? It
+can't be those with merely a passing interest in type: it must be those
+devoured by the subject --- are there enough of them, and will they
+read this? Typographers (in a wide sense) are just as pig-headed and
+opinionated as the rest of us, perhaps even more so, and one could
+easily see factional in-fighting developing between them.
+
+An interesting feature of the magazine is that it is set entirely in
+\TeX. Don did discuss and demonstrate some of the techniques he used to
+achieve this at last year's TUG conference in Santa Barbara (a most
+excellent talk). But: I do notice a few infelicities --- not to do with
+\TeX\ particularly, but to do with proof reading. There is one \TeX\
+failing however: there are far too many hyphens. Three successive
+hyphens are not uncommon, but the maximum number in a row (or at the
+end of a row) was at least~5. This occurs in a paragraph of~23 lines,
+where there are, in total, 10~hyphens. Let's be entirely fair and
+note that the magazine is set double column, with a measure of about
+35--38 characters. That is fairly short: we are talking about 8~words
+to the line. Hyphens can be tweaked by appropriate loading of the
+right parameters, but I think this demonstrates that \TeX's line
+breaking algorithm is not actually as good as we claim it is. Working
+with lines of the length that Knuth uses in the \TeX book, it is
+possible to minimise hyphens and to ensure that successive hyphens are
+rare. Working with narrow measure, \TeX\ all too often throws up
+its hands and rolls over on its back. Still on hyphenation, I found
+\mbox{coor-dinates} rather unexpected. There are also a couple of
+widow lines which could have been avoided, but this I suspect has more
+to do with proofing than \TeX. Otherwise we have both Morris' and
+Morris's, `teh' for `the' (not uncommon, but even a spell checker finds
+this), Updikes' (who was this man Updikes? is he related to Updike?)
+and the odd \mbox{`e nd'} (again easy to find with a spell checker).
+
+I'll be interested to see what the next few issues bring, but right at
+this moment I'm not too sanguine. Maybe if I knew why the issue was
+dedicated to St Therese of Lisieux (no accents this time) I would be
+enlightened. I just hope we shouldn't be lighting candles to St Jude.
+
+\section{Message in a bottle} \TUB\ 15(2) arrived some time before
+Christmas, looking thin and wan at about 70~pages. I have bemoaned the
+late arrival of \TUB\ in this column before. Daily I await the other
+two promised editions for~1994. One will be the conference proceedings,
+but I suspect the other normal issue will also be thin and
+weedy. I tried raising the issue of the timeliness of \TUB\ at the TUG
+AGM at Aston in~1993, to have the discussion turned round by Phil
+Taylor who viewed any criticism of \TUB\ as a criticism of its editor,
+the inestimable Barbara Beeton. Better to have it high quality but
+late I was told, and the audience applauded. I despair. If \TeX\ is a
+production quality tool then we have to explain the non-appearance of
+\TUB\ very carefully. A few years ago, when \TUB\ was similarly late,
+rumours started to circulate that TUG itself had gone out
+of existence. This warning was obviously not enough. Perhaps the
+changes in editorial policy noted in this issue will eventually
+overcome the scheduling difficulties.
+
+
+There were a few gems however: the report of the NTS (New Typesetting
+System) comprises ten (canonical?) points. One discusses the logo they
+should use. As I think Thora Hird used to say, `get the shoes right,
+and everything else falls into place'. Sebastian was right: `a pox on a
+logos'. And apparently the \LaTeX3 project team has decided that
+\LaTeXe\ is \LaTeX, and \LaTeX\ is \LaTeX209. I'm reminded of the
+venerable Leslie Lamport's wisdom on the pronunciation of \LaTeX\ (or
+was that \LaTeX209?) `\dots\ best determined by usage, not
+fiat'. Continuing a fairly recent tradition, \TUB\ also contains
+abstracts of other \TeX\ journals, including these very same Annals. I
+find these \emph{Gleanings} occupying an inordinate amount of space,
+perhaps because it is easier to summarise trivia than substance.
+
+\section{What next?} Since TUG moved its offices to Santa Barbara
+there have been earthquakes and floods. The Los Angeles earthquake of
+94 didn't do much damage locally --- only a few more cracks in the
+building TUG inhabits. The floods earlier this year did affect SB quite
+badly, although again the TUG office survived. Maybe the Tugboat notion
+wasn't so bad after all. As for plague --- well, phylloxera is endemic
+in the Napa Valley. Were I in philosophical mood, I might see
+these events as an allegory on TUG itself.
+
+\end{Article}
+\endinput
+\section{Morphic resonances} By one of those amazing coincidences, the
+meeting held by the group in January this year on SGML, Acrobat and
+\TeX\ was closely paralleled by a similarly titled meeting held by
+\textsc{Gut}enberg. This isn't the first time we have independently
+come up with very similar themes for meetings (the \LaTeXe\ meetings
+occurred about the same time too). The easy answer to why this should
+be is that they are the relatively hot subjects of the time. No
+collusion at all, although maybe our editor's frequent trips to Geneva
+to talk to Michel Goossens (President of \textsc{Gut}enberg) could
+explain a lot.\footnote{`Talk'? Honest hard labour, he means --- Editor.}
+