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\author{Chris Rowley}
\title{Chair's report on 1993--94}
\begin{Article}
First, a big thank you to all my colleagues on the Committee for all
their hard work during the last year.
The notable innovation in 1994 has been the regular appearance of \BV.
Under the editorship of Sebastian Rahtz, and with Robin Fairbairns and
Jonathan Fine as publisher and distributor, issues of our newsletter
now reach members approximately every two months. It contains an
interesting variety of \TeX-related articles in addition to notices of
meetings and subscription forms. In my opinion, \BV\ is the best in
content and, by a wide margin, in timeliness of all the journals and
newsletters produced by \TeX\ user groups. Thanks to Sebastian, Robin
and Jonathan, and also to all those who have written items for \BV.
Four meetings were held during the year. A meeting on `Front Ends to \TeX' was
held at Aston University on 20~October 1993, after the AGM. This was
organized by
Sebastian Rahtz and Peter Abbott, and was attended by about 30~people. Talks
and demonstrations were given by
Adrian Clark, Nikos Drakos, Jonathan Fine, Christopher Mabb and Sebastian
Rahtz.
On 18~January 1994 a meeting was held at Rewley House in Oxford on the
theme `Choosing and Using PostScript Fonts with \TeX'. It was
organized by Alan Jeffrey, Sebastian Rahtz and Ian Hall, and was
attended by about 30~people. Talks were given by Angus Duggan, Alan
Jeffrey, Sebastian Rahtz and Will Shaman, and the meeting concluded
with a panel session.
The big meeting of the year was the two-day meeting at the University
of Warwick: `\LaTeXe: the conference', on 21--22~March 1994. It was
organized by Malcolm Clark and me. The talks by members of
the \LaTeX3 Project Team (Johannes Braams, David Carlisle, Alan
Jeffrey, Frank Mittelbach and me) and Michel Goossens
introduced the audience of 80 to the philosophy and features of the
new standard version of \LaTeX, which had been released in beta-test
in December 1993 and whose first full release was in June 1994.
On 11~July 1994 a training meeting `\LaTeX\ fonts and graphics: a hands-on
tutorial' was held in Cambridge. The organizers were Robin Fairbairns and
Jonathan Fine; the trainer was Alan Jeffrey, and extra training material was
provided by David Carlisle. The 13~participants found the meeting very
worthwhile: it was a pity that no more people wanted to attend.
Thanks to all the organizers, speakers and trainers for making these meetings
possible. Especial thanks to Malcolm Clark, who so successfully was the local
organizer for the residential meeting.
Other members of the Committee may have been less visible, but have
been doing sterling work in the background. For example, Peter Abbott
is to be congratulated on sorting out the Group's accounts and
financial position. Peter has also increased the range of services
available to members, who can now buy, in addition to a range of
books, disc sets of em\TeX{} and Oz\TeX{} at cost price, and the CDROM
of \TeX ware produced by the NTG.
The `Aston Archive' has hitherto been strictly separated from the
\UKTUG. However, during the year it was brought to the Committee's
attention that the Archive might not be able to continue at Aston
University. The Committee felt that the Archive is a considerable
service to members of the \shortuk, and so took upon itself the
investigation of another suitable home for it. After the investigation
of several possible homes, a smooth transfer of the Archive to
Cambridge University has now been achieved. Thanks to Roger Needham at
Cambridge for authorizing this; and to Robin Fairbairns, Martyn
Johnson and Sebastian Rahtz for organizing the changeover and
maintaining this UK node of the CTAN.
A brief history of the relationship between \TeX{} and Aston
university has already appeared in these annals but I should like to
formally record here the enormous debt of gratitude owed by this group
and the world-wide \TeX{} community to Peter Abbott for organising the
large range of activities that made Aston the centre of the \TeX{}
universe for many years.
Finally, I should say something about TUG and our relationship with
it. As a result of discussions at the TUG meeting at Santa Barbara in
July 1994, the relationship between TUG and the various other user
groups has come under scrutiny. It is possible that the role of TUG
will change. There were further discussions at the Euro\TeX\ meeting
in Gda\'nsk in September 1994, but the picture is still far from
clear. I will keep members of \shortuk\ informed of developments.
\end{Article}
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