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.

• Editing and compiling LaTeX documents
• Logical structure
• Chapters, sections, and other document divisions
• Including graphics
• Creating tables
• Bibliographies
• Dealing with large documents

The course will be taking place in central London on the 6th of January 2012, starting at 10 am and running to approximately 5 pm. The course fee is £10 for current UK-TUG members, and £25 for non-members. The fee includes the course itself, refreshments on the day and a copy of the TeX Live 2011 DVD. For non-members, it also includes membership of UK-TUG for until the end of 2012.

Attendees will need to bring a laptop along to the event, although it may be possible to arrange a loan machine for a limited number of people on the day.

Provisional bookings should be made by e-mailing secretary@uk.tug.org.
Confirmation of the booking, including the course fee, needs to be made within three weeks of the provisional booking. Full details of the course location, etc., will be provided to confirmed attendees.

Morning session

Joseph Wright began the day’s discussions with a report on the LaTeX training events run by UK-TUG in the last two years. He explained how the materials have been developed, leading to the source being available on GitHub. Joseph explained that the training is delivered with short sessions at the screen with a lot of opportunity for students to work on examples. Jonathan Fine suggested that videoing parts of course would be an opportunity to make the training more widely available. For this, an on-line LaTeX system would be needed. Joseph pointed to ScribTeX as an existing example. Jonathan also wondered about using the slide source to generate an HTML version of the material. Joseph said he’d look at this.

Simon Dales spoke next about documenting TeX sources. He described using Doxygen, a C tool, to take source comments and turn these into documentation in a variety of formats. He explained that this approach can avoid the need to decided in advance how to document code, but that Doxygen is too linked to C-style syntax to be the ideal tool for TeX. He showed a proof of concept demonstration using Doxygen, then described his second-generation approach to the problem, which he is currently implementing in Lua.

After lunch

Jonathan Fine gave the first talk in afternoon, looking at the opportunities presented by iPad and similar mobile devices. He first explained the Knuth was motivated to write TeX because of the limitations of photolithography in reproducing his books. Jonathan explained that the ePub format, used by most devices except the Kindle, is a compressed HTML5-based set of files. HTML5 features SVG as a key component, and Jonathan described how this allows typography in the webpage. Jonathan described how conversion from DVI to SVG can be used to get TeX quality output into ePub output. There was then a lively discussion about the challenges of mobile device typography.

AGM

The formal business of the day followed at 2 pm. A draft of full minutes for the AGM has already been circulated to members. The make up of the new committee was also announced:

• Simon Dales
• Jonathan Fine
• Alun Moon
• John Peters
• Joseph Wright

The new committee will be making some more announcements in due course about other matters arising.

Afternoon session

After the AGM, Simon Dales talked about using LuaTeX for programming. He showed a simple Hello World document using Lua to include the text in a LaTeX file, then described the ability to load Lua modules. He showed how you can create your own modules to be loaded by Lua. As a fuller demonstration of the use of Lua, he showed how it allows processing of structured data to produce complex table.

Joseph Wright then talked about the TeX.sx site, and what advantages it has for new users over more traditional threaded lists and forums. He described the various features of the site, such as the Q&A structure, voting, reputation and the ability to edit material. Jonathan Fine is also registered on TeX.sx, and added a number of useful comments.

The day ended with a short stroll around Trinity College, which in the autumn sunshine was very pleasant indeed.

• Editing and compiling LaTeX documents
• Logical structure
• Chapters, sections, and other document divisions
• Including graphics
• Creating tables
• Bibliographies
• Dealing with large documents

The course will be taking place on Friday August 26th in central London, and will run from approximately 10 a.m. to around 5 pm. The course will be aimed at new LaTeX users, with an emphasis on hands-on experience. The course will take place on user’s own laptops: remember to bring one along on the day!

The course fee is £10 for current UK-TUG members, and £25 for non-members. The fee includes the course itself, refreshments on the day and a copy of the TeX Live 2010 DVD. For non-members, it also includes membership of UK-TUG for until the end of 2012.

Places are strictly limited by the size of the venue. To book a provisional place, please e-mail joseph.wright@morningstar2.co.uk with your details. The course fee and (for non-members) a copy of the membership form should then be sent to Joseph Wright, UK-TUG Secretary. Payment should be sent within two weeks of making a provisional booking, otherwise the space may be released. We will also hold a ‘reserve’ list of names if the course reaches capacity: experience suggests that the course will book up very rapidly.

We’ll be looking at the possibility of running a similar course again later in the year. There is already a waiting list for information, so if you are interested please do drop the committee a line.

• Setting up LaTeX on a computer
• Creating basic documents
• Logic structure in LaTeX documents
• Including graphical material
• Bibliographies
• LaTeX Q&A

The course will be taking place on Friday April 15th in central Cambridge, and will run from approximately 10 a.m. to around 4:30 pm. The course will be aimed at new LaTeX users, with an emphasis on hands-on experience. We will be using a computer lab equipped with Windows PCs, but there will the opportunity to set up your system to use LaTeX. More details about the full programme for the day will be circulated to participants nearer to the course date.

Places are strictly limited by the size of the venue. To book a provisional place, please e-mail joseph.wright@morningstar2.co.uk with your details. The non-refundable course fee (£10) and the a copy of the membership form should then be sent to Joseph Wright, UK-TUG Secretary. (The course fee includes membership of UK-TUG for 2011.) Payment should be sent within two weeks of making a provisional booking, otherwise the space may be released. We will also hold a ‘reserve’ list of names if the course reaches capacity: experience suggests that the course will book up very rapidly.

The course material is intended as a general introduction to using LaTeX. However, it is useful to have some idea about the interests of those attending, as this enables us to prepare for at least some of the potential questions. A brief outline of your background is therefore encouraged along with your booking. It is also useful to know what operating system you usually use, as this is useful when preparing instructions on how to set up LaTeX for your own systems.