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% Report plus info re distributors of certain products which I hope
% is accurate: no prices as I am sure they would not be correct for UK.
%
% Please feel free to edit it however you like.
%
\def\linesep{\vskip\baselineskip}
\let\sf\relax
\let\extraspace\quad
\centerline{\bf \TeX\ Users Group 1987 Meeting }
\centerline{\bf 2. Is there \TeX \ after Knuth?} % Possible title.
\medskip\noindent
The answer from the Seattle meeting was
loud and clear: Yes! it is not only very alive and well but busy evolving into
Japanese and Turkish speaking species. It is also becoming slowly accepted by
the commercial world: both by publishers and typesetters. The majority of the
grumbles and ``Why on earth did Knuth do\dots '' comments came from the computing
professionals; i.e.\ those
whose interests involve using \TeX \ as a programming language or who are
attempting to unravel and adapt
macros written by other \TeX nicians. Their consensus was
roughly as follows: \TeX \ is hard to program in and to debug, and nigh on
impossible to produce good (according to the fashionable standards) code; to
this those with wider aesthetic standards often add that \TeX \ enables bad
typesetting as easily as it does good.
But enough of the gripes, with Seattle putting on its very best in clear, sunny
weather for us it was impossible to be anything but optimistic: and those who
could discipline themselves to stay
in the lecture theatre for long enough heard about the use of
TeX in publications ranging from the ivory towers of Linguistics
journals---where
the publishers had discovered (with some surprise?) that {\tt \$} signs have
lots of nonmathematical uses, to the mass-media world of {\sf TV--Guide} (the US
equivalent of TV\kern-2pt /Radio Times) --- where allowing \TeX \ to ``float''
an advert onto
the wrong page in just
one of the 108 editions could result in badness \$150,000!
(and probably some trade for the legal profession who, in Maryland at least,
have ``endorsed \TeX\ as their standard for Text Formatting'').
The relationship between \TeX\ and the PostScript
world was subjected to very close
scrutiny from many different angles but I shall not attempt to summarize what
was said as I am still trying to piece together into some semblance of coherence
the enormous amount of advice and information which I accumulated on the
subject. It is certainly one on which everyone in the \TeX\ world has a lot
to say; I wonder if PUG members spend so much time wondering about this
relationship.
The marketing slots were, on the whole, fairly low-key. Many software
goodies were
promised to be ``ready for shipping this fall'' but my experience leads me to
advise waiting until you know someone else who already
has been sent the {\it final\/} release version
before parting with your money. The reasonably-priced products which seemed to
me to be most likely to warrant further investigation were:
\item{$\bullet$} Publishing Companion from K-Talk Communications:\extraspace claims to
take documents
``from WordPerfect to typesetting, completely untouched by human hands'' (other
wordprocessors, e.g. WORD are to be included ``soon''). K-Talk's flyer, which
had been produced using this package, suggests that this software
exemplifies the criticism I mentioned above: that
\TeX \ is as good at sloppy typesetting as it is at excellent typesetting;
however, it may be that the true
culprit in this case is WordPerfect, which lays no
claim to aesthetic judgement.
\item{$\bullet$} \TeX WRITE from Docusoft Publishing Technologies:\extraspace this is an
environment for \TeX\ on an IBM-type PC. I have a pre-release
version of this and, with the bugs
removed and the promised features implemented, it could provide
a very friendly one:
it is, briefly, a multiple-buffer,
full-screen editor, with optional menus, which allows files to be \TeX ed,
Previewed, etc.\
without leaving it. My major criticism of it is that, as an editor, it is not
fully adapted to editing \TeX \ files.
\item{$\bullet$} Macro\TeX\ from \TeX nology Inc:\extraspace this is Amy Hendrickson's macro
package which is in fact a toolkit of independent suites of macros, all of
which work with Plain \TeX. They cover such areas as Tables, Indexing and
Glossaries; and the author says that she hopes that the macro
constructions in
the package will be accessible by and useful to those who want to write
their own macros
to do either similar things or even ``something completely different''.
Those with the odd couple of thousand dollars to spare and a Sun Workstation
will of course be eagerly awaiting delivery of the software
no Yuppie typesetter could possibly be without --- The Publisher from Arbortext;
the pre-release version was happily singing and dancing its way through a
somewhat limited routine but the (real)-timing of its
``WYSIWYWouldGetIf\dots\
show'' was most impressive. Nevertheless, when my boat comes in or I write The
Program (you know, the one which is able to accurately forcast all
the financial markets in the
world and act appropriately before anyone else's does), after the red BMW it
will have to be a Monotype Lasercomp, together with whatever secret software the
long-established German typesetting company St\"urtz have developed to give \TeX \
access to the Aladdin's cave of Monotype fonts, especially those for
between the \$-signs! Who knows, then I may be able to keep my linguistics
colleagues supplied with all the diacritics and phonetic symbols they lust
after, {\it and\/}
get an empty set symbol which is more to my editor's (the human
one, that is) taste.
I do not wish to give the impression that the meeting offered none of what has
been in the past its staple diet: implementations of \TeX; and
this years fashions in device drivers. There was indeed plenty of information
from site-coordinators, companies and consultants to satisfy such appetites.
Also, a movement was started to set standards for printer drivers which led to
considerable controversy over what such standards should cover. However, the
meeting gave me the clear message that TUG is becoming more and more a true
{\it Users\/} Group rather than merely an {\it implementor's\/} group.
Even clearer though, and I suspect longer lasting, than any such impressions (or
what I learnt about accents and breathing signs in Modern Greek, and what it
takes to change a hash table size) will be my memories of the never-ending
display of sea, lakes, forests and snow-capped mountains which Seattle provided
for us that week in August.
% Appendix:
\linesep\noindent
Names and addresses of suppliers mentioned above:
\linesep
{\obeylines\parindent2em
\vbox{Arbortext Inc
416 Fourth Street
PO Box 7993
Ann Arbor
Michigan 48107
USA
$+1$ 313 996 3356}
\linesep\goodbreak
\vbox{Docusoft Publishing Technologies Inc
1150 Homer Street
Vancouver
British Columbia V6B 2X8
Canada
$+1$ 604 687 0354}
\linesep\goodbreak
\vbox{K--Talk Communications
3920 Olentangy River Road
Columbus
Ohio 43214
USA
$+1$ 614 459 9711}
\linesep\goodbreak
\vbox{Seattle Tourist Authority
City Hall
Seattle
Washington
USA}
\linesep\goodbreak
\vbox{\TeX nology Inc
57 Longwood Avenue \#8
Brookline
Massachussets 02146 % spelling??
USA
$+1$ 617 738 8029}
\linesep\goodbreak
\vbox{Universit\"ats-druckerei H. St\"urtz AG
Beethovenstra\ss e 5
D-8700 W\"urzburg I
DFR
$+49$ 9 31 385 323} }
\medskip
\rightline{\sl Chris Rowley, Open University}
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