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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.} + |