Promoting the use of TeX in the United Kingdom
The first copy of Baskerville for some years is in the post to UK-TUG members. Many thanks to the Editor, Jonathan Webley, for the effort he has put in in producing it. We look forward to getting submissions for the next issue!
If you’re expecting a copy and it doesn’t arrive please contact the Membership Secretary.
Baskerville is also available electronically to members and non-members.
On a recent meander around the internet, we spotted that River Valley have a set of videos recorded at our 2007 meeting on publishing mathematics. For those people interested, the talk titles were:
All very interesting!
Planning is ongoing for a (La)TeX training session at the UK Unix Users’ Group Summer Meeting in Birmingham. Our earlier post gave initial details, but we are now making progress on the detail. The tutorial sessions are on Friday, the 7th of August. We are expecting to have a session in the morning (from 09:00 to about 13:30), and our abstract at the moment reads:
Introduction to LaTeX
A tutorial by given by members of the UK TeX Users Group. The tutorial will begin with an introduction to the fundamental concepts of TeX and LaTeX, and then move on to more advanced topics. The tutors are likely to include one or both of
- Jonathan Fine: UK-TUG chair and developer of MathTran
- Joseph Wright: UK-TUG webmaster and member of the LaTeX3 project
We are currently asking prominent UK TeX training experts if they can attend to help lead the session. We’re also keen to get the content right: please let us know if there is a topic we should include.
Promoted by the EuroTeX 2009 reminder, Karl Berry has sent out a message about TUG 2009:
TUG 2009 will be in Notre Dame, Indiana, at the end of July. A list
of presentations and other information is posted at
http://tug.org/tug2009. Please consider coming!The more the merrier, as always.
The following message dropped into the UK-TUG inbox this morning: a timely reminder!
Dear TeX user,
The upcoming EuroTeX 2009 takes place from August 31 till September 4 in Den Haag in The Netherlands. In parallel we will run the third ConTeXt conference. We already have some 25 talks and tutorials submitted but we need a few more as we run a parallel program.
If you are willing to present a paper or tutorial, please let us know. The theme of the conference is “Educational Uses of TeX” but of course other TeX and MetaPost related topics will be covered as well. Depending on the amount of contributions we will program them in blocks that cover general topics but we will also cluster talks and turorials specific to macro packages in an additional program.
You can send your proposal(s) to eurotex@ntg.nl. Registration for the conference closes at July 1, 2009.
On behalf of the organization,
Taco Hoekwater & Hans Hagen
The Templates page sees a few changes. There is a new template for doing label printing, for mail-shots and so on. At the same time, the letter mail merge and directory templates have been updated to use the latest version of the datatool package. As always, feedback and new template ideas are always welcome.
The first issue of Baskerville for a number of years is now ready for release. The Committee are currently finalising delivery details. We will be sending out a PDF copy of Baskerville to all members electronically. At the same time, we will be sending out printed copies to all members unless they opt out. Members who do not want to receive a printed copy of Baskerville should let us know by e-mail.
Niall Mansfield has been in touch with the Committee, looking for some input on the potential for getting a number of LaTeX books in German translated in English. The general topics of the books are:
Niall is hoping to to get input into three general questions:
After some discussion with the Committee, Niall has agree to take the books along to the regular The Tech Pub Crawl this Tuesday (the 5th of May). Niall will be at the The Marketplace Bar, 11 Marketplace, London W1W 8AH from about 6 p.m. (nearest tube Oxford Circus). Anyone wishing to get hold of Niall directly should e-mail the Committee.
The Committee has received a message from the Open University (OU). As many UK-TUG members will know, the OU is a long standing centre of TeX use in the UK. They are now looking for a TeX consultant for their system.
A review of TeX at The Open University
The Open University wants expert advice and an outside view on how it should develop its system and workflow for the production of mathematics and physics course with heavy mathematical content.
The present system, established in 1992, uses a heavily customized version of LaTeX for both authoring and pagination to PDF. We now wish in addition to generate XML outputs for use on our virtual learning environment.
We are looking for an independent consultant to investigate, meet with stakeholders, and write a report with reasoned recommendations. Experience of TeX, of mathematical content and of XML is required.
We would like this review to take place in July 2009, but other dates are possible. To be considered for this work please email an expression of interest to G.E.Price (at) open.ac.uk by 12 noon on Friday 15 May 2009. Further information is available and will be sent to those who express interest.
For those in search of good quality LaTeX resources on-line, the LaTeX Wikibook is currently a “featured” title on the Wikibooks site. To quote the site:
LaTeX is a featured book on Wikibooks because it contains substantial content, it is well-formatted, and the Wikibooks community has decided to feature it on the main page or in other places.