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\def\mwc{{\sc mwc}}\def\bc{{\sc bc}}
\centerline{\bf The Pres says\dots}
\medskip
\noindent
One of the advantages of the Exeter `Advanced' course
was the presence of the current TUG President,
Bart Childs. Bart is from the Computer Science
Department at Texas A\&M (Aggies and Mechs) University.
One of the areas that \TeX\ and TUG are rather
weak in is that of background. The tiny bits of
real `people-information' which sneaks into TUGboat,
or the flyleaf of one of the books is slight. Perhaps
{\it email} goes closest to revealing what goes on
beneath the academic fa\c cade. As a very first attempt
to put a little more flesh on the bones of \TeX, TUG
and TUG's President, this is the contents of an
interview with Bart (rather late one evening, and
after a few beers). It would be great to think it
is the first of many such interviews, but that all
depends. This particular interview
touches briefly on the events which led to
Bart becoming President, and gives a view
from the President's desk (or rather, his
Data General laptop microcomputer --- running
pc\TeX\ and a preview). One last note: you may
notice that Bart sounds a bit like me here. I
haven't been able to transfer the Texan drawl.
The content is faithful in spirit to what was said, although
the accent and delivery have been transmuted.
It is therefore closer to a meta-interview.
\smallskip
\noindent \mwc: How did you get into this?
\noindent \bc: We had a simple word processing system, for which
I had drawn up
the specification, and since we also had the source code, I had
modified it to handle some extensions into more mathematical work.
I thought it was really neat, but Norman Naugle said
``hold everything ---
have you seen \TeX?'' So I held everything and saw \TeX.
This was in
'78. I was impressed, threw away all the
stuff I had been doing, and we decided to implement \TeX,
from the SAIL version which was currently
available. But before we started we sent a grad student to Stanford
to the TUG meeting that fall and he came back saying
``hold everything ---
wait until the {\tt WEB} release!''
So we waited a while for the {\tt WEB}
release. I actually started with version 0.6,
and had slowly begun to make some
progress with it, building tangle and the tangle.change when
version 0.9 arrived. We started with it on a Thursday afternoon,
and by the Saturday
night it had all been created. From there we went on to
develop the QMS Lasergrafix driver.
At the next TUG meeting Norman
Naugle volunteered Texas A\&M to be the Prime and DG distributors
for \TeX. Fairly soon after,
John Crawford of Ohio State University
took over the Prime distribution and we concentrated
on the DG.
We are still doing \TeX\ implementations:
currently I'm working on a Cray version, under CTSS.
Norman was still busy volunteering of course,
and at another TUG meeting,
Norman volunteered me for President.
As President, I feel it is important for \TeX\ and TUG to be as
public domain as possible, which helps to explain our
dependence on ``academics'' in the major office bearing jobs.
But much of the success of TUG (and \TeX) lies in the good
support it has had from commercial organisations,
like Addison-Wesley, Personal \TeX, Kellerman \& Smith, and ArborText.
\smallskip
\noindent \mwc: What of the future?
\noindent \bc: Systems like NBI, Interleaf and Ventura may well
adopt \TeX\ and SGML for the layout and structure
functions of documents.
ArborText's Publisher is a notable step in this direction,
incorporating both \TeX\ and \SGML. The advantage of \TeX, as
Don Knuth noted, is its quality, and, no less important,
its archival capabilities. It is available on a huge
range of systems, and in 20 years the same document
will still produce the same end results.
\smallskip
\noindent \mwc: Will \TeX\ be unchanged in 20 years?
\noindent \bc: No, but the changes will be to the front end --- the face
that \TeX\ presents, and there will be extensions through the
use of `specials' to colour and graphics.
\TeX\ itself will remain the same.
As an example of `front-ends', we have a \TeX\ system on
our local Data General machine, Kinder\TeX. This provides
a menu-driven front end, which, among other things, provides
tailored editing functions, so that the function keys
can be used for standard \TeX\ control sequences. We have
tried to tie things together so that the interface is
consistent, and we hope, fairly intuitive.
One of the issues which I am keen for TUG (and all \TeX\ users)
to debate is that of standards --- notably standards for specials.
For example, how to handle the arguments. I am currently working with
an approach through QUIC (the QMS laser printer language)
and a device neutral
meta file to a graphics dvi which would allow output to
QMS, naked Canon, ATI, and later, PostScript.
\smallskip
\noindent \mwc: What is TUG's role?
\noindent \bc: TUG will have a major
role to play in establishing standards for \TeX\ distribution.
The public domain releases should include, at the least,
\TeX, Metafont and the Computer Modern fonts. Standards should be
created for the smaller versions, like the commercial
micro releases, where there is obviously
a constraint on the amount of material you can include.
Driver standards need to be established (to include
features like graphics, landscape and portrait mode etc.),
and to be verified
by a trip test.
Education is needed to ensure that driver writers are
incorporating the `position correction' for pixel boundaries,
to ensure that
dvi really is device independent. The font scaling problem in
\LaTeX\ and \SliTeX\ needs
to be addressed, and the solution made available.
The distribution of this
sort of information must not depend on academic networks.
The continued financial strength of TUG will enable us to
initiate new services, like
a \TeX
\break
\noindent `helpdesk': this requires some
staff increase at TUG, which should have
happened by now. There will be greater separation from the AMS,
another reflection of the strength and autonomy of TUG.
\smallskip
\noindent \mwc: Any crystal ball forecasts?
\noindent \bc: \TeX\ already exists in Pascal and C realisations.
It is likely that other languages will be used, like Ada and Lisp.
But far more likely, and more useful to individual \TeX\ users
will be the more general and widespread adoption of
\TeX\ `environments',
where \TeX\ can be given a far friendlier face, with menu driven
options, the use of function keys, icons, \SGML\ tags,
and exploitation of the underlying operating system, for example to
allow the user the capability of exiting to command mode level
(particularly useful if you get the `file not found message'), or
to have
the ability to fork off other processes while \TeX\ is running.
For example, there is no real reason why a preview could not
be running together with \TeX, so that once a page has been
through \TeX\ and a dvi produced, the preview driver couldn't
pick up that first page and display it. In general, proofing
a preview page takes much longer than producing the dvi, so
\TeX\ would always be ahead of you, once the first page had
been produced.
We may also expect to see \TeX\ in a distributed environment,
where a `mainframe' handles the \TeX ing, but features
like editing, preview, etc, are handled locally on
a workstation. Preview itself should improve, with large high resolution
(say 300dpi) screens.
The use of colour is inevitable, and also mixed media.
And looking to another fashionable area,
we will probably see \TeX\ incorporated into hypertext applications.
There is no reason why film shouldn't run from within \TeX,
so that text viewed on a screen could include a diagram
of an object which rotated, or a manual
could have `exploded' views which really
did seem to explode!
Lastly, we should not ignore \MF.
\MF\ is becoming a more mature piece of software,
and we should begin to see
more tools available for it, in particular
to allow pixel editing in order to tune fonts.
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