General

Our popular LaTeX course, taking place in January, is once again fully-booked. We will be adding people to a reserve list, in case any spaces become available!

In the UK-TUG inbox today, we were informed of a new project: OERT: Open
Educational Resources for Typography.

This project aims to make high quality learning resources on typography
and type design available to every student in the world. The resources
will be completely free and open, like Wikipedia.

As anticipated, our LaTeX for Beginners course is now fully-booked. As with the previous course, we will be maintaining a list for any spaces which do become available, and are also already planning yet another presentation of the same material for later in the year. So do e-mail to express your interest!

The results of voting on the three motions put to the SEGM were as follows:

• Motion 1. 27 for, 0 against, 0 abstentions
• Motion 2. 27 for, 0 against, 0 abstentions
• Motion 3. 25 for, 1 against, 1 abstentions

In addition, the committee received two e-mails containing votes which were outside of the period of the SEGM, which are therefore regarded as invalid.

All three motions are therefore passed. There will be a separate notice shortly regarding renewal of membership for next year (2011).

The Committee has called a Special Electronic General Meeting (SEGM) of UK-TUG, to run from 29/11/2010 (00:01) to 05/12/2010 (23:59), inclusive. Attendance of members at the recent AGM was not sufficient to hold a formal vote on the motions put to that meeting, and an SEGM is therefore being held to allow voting to take place.

Motions

Three motions are to be considered at the SEGM:

1. That this meeting approves the accounts for 2009–10.
2. That this meeting delegates authority to appoint an inspector for the 2010–11 accounts to the Committee, who shall decide after taking advice from the Treasurer.
3. That the membership fee for 2011 be £10 for all individual members (apart from life members), and that there be no additional entrance fee.

As previously detailed, these motions are all necessary for the day to day administration of UK-TUG. At the AGM, informal discussion about all three took place and the members present indicated their support for all of the motions.

Discussion

Discussion at the SEGM should take place on the ‘announce’ mailing list (uktug-announce@tug.org). Messages posted by members to this list concerning the SEGM will be sent out to all members.

Voting

Voting on the motions for the SEGM will take place by members posting to the ‘committee’ e-mail address (uktug-committee@uk.tug.org). In contrast to discussion e-mails, these votes will only be seen by the committee. For each motion, members should indicate whether they are voting FOR, AGAINST a motion, or ABSTAIN from voting. Votes will only be counted if received by the Committee via uktug-committee@uk.tug.org during the time frame of the SEGM.

Start of the SEGM

An e-mail will be sent to the ‘announce’ list the day before the SEGM starts. This will include a voting form for the three motions to be considered.

The Committee is always keen to promote (La)TeX use. This week, we spotted a LaTeX course being run by the University of Oxford: http://www.conted.ox.ac.uk/courses/details.php?id=O10P133MAJ. This takes place on the 16th of October, and is open to the general public.

The Committee have just received TeX Live 2009 DVDs from the suppliers. They will be mailed out to members in the near future. Non-members interested in getting hold of a DVD should e-mail the Committee.

The AGM of the UK TeX Users Group will take place on Saturday 14th
November at 2 pm at:

Physics and Astronomy, Room E7
University College London
London (walking distance from Euston)
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/silva/phys/find

The entrance to the room is inside the main quadrangle of UCL. Enter
from Gower Street, and the entrance to the building is in the far left
corner. We will put up some signs from there.

There will be a speaker meeting and workshop as part of the AGM day, to
run from 11 am to 5 pm. The outline programme is:

• 11 pm Arrival, and coffee is available
• 11:30 am to 1 pm
  • Jonathan Fine: “Report on Mathematical Content Workshop”

    http://groups.google.com/group/uk-math-content-2009/web/home

  • Joseph Wright: “xparse – beyond \newcommand”
  • Lightening talks: Open to anyone to give a 5 to 10 minute talk on any
    TeX related subject of their choice
• 1 pm to 2 pm Lunch/informal discussions
• 2 pm to 3 pm UK-TUG AGM
• 3 pm to 5 pm Workshop on TeX documentation and support

If you wish to give a talk, either in the lightning sessions or a longer
presentation, the committee would like to hear from you.

There is no charge for attending any part of the session: non-members
are also welcome, but of course cannot vote at the AGM!

Planning for TUG 2010 is already under way. In the UK-TUG inbox this morning was this message from Karl Berry:

The upcoming TUG 2010 conference will be held in in San Francisco, California, USA, from June 28–30, 2010.  We are still finalizing the exact venue, but wanted to announce the dates now that they are firm.

Since 2010 is TeX’s 32nd birthday, the Grand Wizard has graciously
agreed to participate.  In addition to Dr. Knuth, many of the other
original Stanford TeX project members, including David Fuchs,
John Hobby, Michael Plass, Oren Patashnik, Tom Rokicki, and
Luis Trabb-Pardo plan to be present.

We will be scheduling several activities for the final day (June 30),
including the conference banquet, to honor the work of the Stanford TeX project and celebrate TeX’s 32nd anniversary.

The call for papers, registration form, and other details will be posted
as soon as we know them, at:
http://tug.org/tug2010/