A successful (half) day of training

Members will be pleased to know that the training session in Birmingham went well. The session was led by Jonathan Fine (UK-TUG Chairman) and Alun Moon, and covered a variety of topics.  Jonathan writes:

[Once everyone had a working TeX system] we set the trainees to work on the part of Nicola Talbot’s novices guide that was most relevant to there interest in TeX (such as mathematical formulas or document structure).

[Before coffee] we asked the trainees to write on the board topics they’d like us to cover after the break. We got back there were about 10 such topics, and Alun and I took turns in covering them. Alun’s approach was to tell them how to do it. My approach was to explain what was happening underneath.

After lunch we has another, short session. I gave a description of what happens with TeX macros, based on:

\def\swap #1#2{#2#1}
\message{\swap\swap ABC}

The Committee thank Jonathan and Alun for leading the session. UK-TUG is always keen to promote TeX use in the UK: please do contact us to discuss training opportunities.