Promoting the use of TeX in the United Kingdom
The training course ‘Using LaTeX to write a thesis’ took place today, led by Nicola Talbot and Joseph Wright at UEA London. Just over twenty people made it to the day, and there was a good mix of people. Planning for the next presentation will begin soon, as there were many more people wanting to attend than places available.
The notes for the course are available in PDF format here. You can also download the source for the slides, tutor notes and examples used on the day.
The recently advertised training course on LaTeX has proved to be very popular indeed, to the point where all of the spaces are already taken! We are starting a list of interested people in case anyone drops out, and will be looking at holding another course later in the year if there is the interest. So do consider sending a registration e-mail: the more people we know are interested the more likely it is that another course can be organised.
Many people need to use LaTeX to write reports, papers and so on, but find getting started with LaTeX challenging. The UK TeX Users’ Group (UK-TUG) and the University of East Anglia (UEA) are please to announce a training course to help new users get started with LaTeX. The course will be focussed on the needs of new users, using the example of writing a thesis as a typical requirement for the inexperienced LaTeX user.
The training course will take place on the 30th of July at UEA’s facilities in central London (http://www.uea.ac.uk/london/about/londonlocation). The course venue is just a few minutes walk from Liverpool Street Station in the heart of the City of London.
The course will cover a broad range of topics for new users. The outline programme is
10:00 Refreshments
10:30 What is LaTeX, and what is TeX?
10:45 Installing LaTeX
11:15 Creating a simple document
11:45 Document classes
12:30 Lunch
13:30 Document structure
14:30 Graphics
15:00 BibTeX
15:30 Refreshments
16:00 Q & A session
Depending on the particular interests of participants, the exact details of the material to be presented may be modified.
The course will be presented by Nicola Talbot and Joseph Wright, who are both very experienced LaTeX users and prominent in the UK LaTeX community.
No previous LaTeX experience is needed to attend the course, as we will start with an introduction to TeX and LaTeX.
If possible, please bring your own laptop to the course. Part of the course content is setting up LaTeX on your own system, with help from the course leaders. If you can’t bring a laptop, let us know when you register and we will sort out a working system.
LaTeX is available across different platforms, and so the course will be accessible to Windows, Mac and Linux users.
The cost of the course is being subsidised by UK-TUG, and so the fee for attending the course will be only £10. This will include:
The fee can be paid on the day of the course, but registration is essential as places are limited. Please e-mail Joseph Wright <joseph.wright@morningstar2.co.uk> to register. Please include:
Jonathan Fine, the current Chairman of UK-TUG, has reminded members that thought will need to be given soon to replacing some members of the Committee:
I’ve served as Chair of UK-TUG for 4 years and David Saunders a little longer as Treasurer. At AGM this autumn these posts become vacant, and David and I won’t be standing for re-election (although we will be standing to stay on the Committee).
The AGM usually falls in November, so there is some time for people to start planning. Jonathan goes on to say
Please consider stepping forward to serve the TeX community in the UK. Treasurer is an important post. The accounts are now in good order, thanks to David’s work, and he’s willing to mentor his replacement as Treasurer. We’re also looking for a Chair to help provide leadership.
New members can be co-opted onto the Committee, so anyone interested can volunteer to join the Committee now and see what is involved.
It’s obviously important that UK-TUG continues to have a full complement of officers on the Committee (and indeed this is required by our Constitution). So for any more detail please drop the Committee an e-mail.
UK-TUG recently posted the latest edition of Baskerville to members. This is available to everyone in electronic format: download the PDF. New articles are always welcome: please contact the editor with ideas!
This dropped into the UK-TUG inbox earlier today
Dear TeXies, programmers, typographers – TeX friends and lovers of fine typography,
This is the call for papers and invitation for BachoTeX 2010, the XVIIIth Polish TeX users Group conference. As usual, it will be held at the traditional TeXies’ and GUST meeting place, Bachotek near Brodnica, in the north-east of Poland, from April 30 until May 4, 2010, inclusive. This time we are especially trying to get-together typographers with programmers and designers of typography systems:
Typographers and programmers: mutual inspirations
Typography, the art of composing signs and graphics into pages and designing signs and graphics is nowadays inadvertently linked with using software. Programmers design and create systems which serve as tools for typographic projects.
During this conference we want to get together two groups of people: programmers and designers of typographic systems with typographers and other users of such systems. Share your experiences. Tell others how you are doing it. Let’s together look into what programmers can offer to those who create works containing letters and other signs and how programmers can profit from the knowledge and experience of the users of such systems, designers, typographers or creators of web pages.
The members of GUST, organizers of the conference, are especially sensitive to typesetting precision, solicitude and dependability, both in creating the tools and using them. We’d like the typographic and programming elegance and solicitude to be reflected in the conference presentations.
Especially invited are presentations on:
- typographic projects ranging from business cards designs through web pages up to multi-volume books; we are interested is problems encountered, technologies employed, drawbacks of available software, unfulfilled dreams, successes or barriers and obstacles.
- designing and creating programs and programming systems aimed and typographic goals: both batch and interactive typesetting systems, client-server realizations, especially such for web sites.
- use of typography where programmability is vital: database extracts or combining multimedia and typography.
Of course we will gladly accept presentations relating the above with the TeX typesetting system but that is not a requirement for acceptance.
Let this meeting of typographers and programmers creating helper systems for typography become a step towards beautiful results!
Submissions, deadlines and addresses
Proposals (abstracts) should be e-mailed to the Program Committee, which listens at the address of prog-2010 at gust dot org dot pl. Boguslaw Jackowski (b underscore jackowski at gust dot org dot pl) is the appointed chairman. Also, please note the ‘Call for TeX Pearls’ below.
The deadline for abstracts and other proposals is March 28th 2010. The deadline for final papers to appear in the conference materials is April 10th, 2010.
The conference web pages, including a registration form, are at the canonical address: http://gust.org.pl/bachotex/2010.
Call for TeX Pearls
We are continuing the tradition of ‘The Pearls of TeX Programming’. Here is, briefly, what is wanted:
- short TeX, MF or MP macro(s)
- results must be useful, and the solution not obvious
- easy to explain : 10 minutes at most
If you have something that fits the bill, please consider submitting a proposal. If you know of somebody’s work that does the same, please let us know, and we will contact that person. Other details and previously collected pearls can be found at http://www.gust.org.pl/projects/pearls/. The dedicated email address is: pearls at gust dot org dot pl.
Jerzy Ludwichowski
GUST, President
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.
UK-TUG has been holding a Special Electronic General Meeting over the last week. The voting period has now ended, and the Committee are pleased to announce that all four motions to be considered have been agreed. Three motions were day-to-day running matters, and the fourth was a minor clarification of the Constitution. Thanks to everyone who voted.
Following the successful discussions at the UK-TUG AGM on supporting LaTeX users, the Committee is now planning a Spring Meeting with the title LaTeX Support and Training. At present, things are still at an early planning stage. We are aiming the meeting as an even to bring together people who provide support or training about LaTeX to new users, for example university-based lecturers, IT support staff and active members of the various online support avenues. The Committee are currently inviting a number of exciting speakers to attend: please do make suggestions about potential speakers or to come forward yourself!
Thanks to everyone who came to the Speaker Meeting and AGM yesterday at UCL. The day was divided into three distinct parts:
The meeting began with a talk by Jonathan Fine reporting on the recent UK Mathematics Contents Workshop. Jonathan gave an overview of the wide range of people interested in the area, and how the meeting had been funded. He then opened the floor to discussion about issues that arose from the ideas presented. There was considerable interest in methods for presenting mathematical content on the web, and also in digitising older material. Topics mentioned included:
The second talk was given by Joseph Wright on xparse, a part of the ongoing work of the LaTeX Project. xparse is intended to be a more flexible replacement for \newcommand. Joseph’s slides are available here in PDF format. Discussion following Joseph’s talk centred on some aspects of the xparse implementation and also how a better method for defining LaTeX commands could help with documentation.
The final talk was given after lunch by Simon Dales, and focussed on his PANO method for using low-resolution images as place holders for higher resolution replacements in documents. Simon explained how the idea originally arose from methods used when network connections were slow and printers struggled with high resolution images. The ability to use external image sources, such as Flickr, to avoid PDF file “bloat” was discussed.
All three talk stimulated a lot of lively discussion, and the Committee thanks all of the speakers for presenting at the meeting.
Formal minutes of the AGM will be produced in due course. The main business transacted at the AGM was the election of a new Committee. Jonathan Fine continues as Chairman of UK-TUG for another year. The new Committee currently consists of:
Motions were not passed at the AGM, and the Committee will be holding a Special Electronic General Meeting to transact ongoing business of UK-TUG. Members will be informed about this directly.
The final accounts for 2008–09 were presented by David Saunders: these are essentially unchanged from those circulated earlier.
The final part of the day was used as an opportunity to discuss documentation and supporting new LaTeX users. There was a spread of experience in those attending the meeting, and a number of useful ideas came up. The Committee hope to summarise these in a published form, to appear in Baskerville and other appropriate outlets. More details of this will follow when available.
Tags: AGM, LaTeX Support, Workshop