\title{Malcolm's Gleanings}
\author[Malcolm Clark]{Malcolm Clark\\\texttt{m.clark@warwick.ac.uk}}
\begin{Article}

\section{TUG94, The Conference}
My impressions of the TUG94 conference in Santa Barbara will be pretty
general:\footnote{Readers who want a different view can peruse Michel
  Goossens' article earlier in this issue of \BV.} I did not sit
through every session and listen to every talk. To be frank, that's
not really what I go to these events for. Since we had the preprints
as part of the conference pack, I could (if I wanted) flick through
and pick out the potentially interesting ones. Or better, see what was
really dire, and ignore them. Since I seemed to be roped in to other
conference stuff anyway, I kept having to disappear and find people.

One distressing feature I did note was the inability of many speakers
to address an audience.  We are in a fairly large auditorium.
Fortunately there are microphones, but in US style these are fixed
rather than throat or lapel mikes. This does make mobility a problem,
especially when you are trying to use overheads. So many people turn
to the projected slide and point to it instead of pointing to the
slide on the ohp and talking to the audience.  A microphone simply
does not catch your voice if you turn the back of your head to it.
Honest. One other thing I notice is that the \TeX\ Users Group (or
perhaps \TeX\ users) have little charisma.  I suppose when the
material is so worthy (\ie high in \emph{content}), the
presentation (\ie the \emph{form}) shouldn't matter. I'm sorry, but
it does. But again, when addressing an audience of presumed converts,
perhaps we shouldn't worry about a lack of presentation skills. Again,
I think not. It does make us look very amateurish, and not everyone in
the audience is a convert.

The conference had a number of `big names'. At least, it had some
people who were well known, but not frequent attendees at the annual
meeting. The first coup was Chuck Bigelow, who gave an entertaining
enough talk, but its relevance to \TeX\ was not clear. Leslie Lamport's
contribution was interesting, although when he started talking about \LaTeX4
a shudder seemed to run through the \LaTeX3 team. He had something to
say about structure editors, but informal discussions later suggested
that he maligned them unfairly. If you want to visualise LL as you
read the \LaTeX\ book, the Bibby lion cartoons in it are 
remarkably similar. Oren Patashnik
also talked about \BibTeX. I had imagined someone at least seven feet tall.
Perhaps the other `newcomer' I was hoping to see was Norm Walsh
whose book `Making \TeX\ work' had just been published. (He nearly is
seven feet tall.) Apart from that it was the usual gaggle of \TeX ies.

In general the conference seemed to run smoothly, or at least, not
many people saw the hitches. The most obvious hitch was the lack of
tea or coffee on the afternoon of the first day. The overhead projectors
could have been better. The vendors could also have had a better deal.
To get to the vendors you had to poke your way through an apparent
dead end, past a few bins and through a nondescript door. And all they
had were a few tables.

The social programme was slightly chaotic: it started with a reception
where keg of Sierra Nevada turned out to be Michelob, but the bowling
turned out well, with some pleasant surprises (the usual performances
from Nelson Beebe and Ken Dreyhaupt, and a cute native American rain
dance from Don `do people really think I'm a nerd' Hosek); the
barbecue at the beach benefited from some real Sierra Nevada (as well
as copious quantities of other comestibles); the boat trip was
apparently a success, despite some upchucking and no whales -- and
much confusion on how or when to get to the boat; the banquet (a
buffet, actually) was limited in choice, but agreeable enough, and the
music improved enormously as the evening progressed -- enough to get a
surprising number of people on their feet, notably Tom `party animal'
Rokicki.

Now, I wouldn't like you to get the idea that we're only here to have
a good time, but the social side really is valuable. You end up
talking to all sorts of people and probably learn more useful stuff
this way than in the rest of the conference. I toy with the idea of
having one single parallel session and devoting the rest of the time
to constructive socialisation.

The `Tugly Telegraph' made its appearance each day.  It's useful,
since it has a more accurate daily programme, as well as instructions
on how to get to `events', and other general bits and pieces. It is
perhaps less successful than last year's at Aston, but then, its
editor, John Berlin, is doing other jobs too (unlike last year's
editor), and only occasional extra help with the newsletter. In any
event, he manages to get each edition out before midnight on the
preceding day. The crossword flops: no correct entries are submitted.
Peter Flynn is obviously too subtle or devious.

I'm told that the TUG general meeting overruns. This was one event I
was determined to miss. The next two talks are more or less cancelled.
As a result, there is a proposal that next year's general meeting
will be open ended.  This is naive. Given a choice between a general
meeting at (say) four o'clock, which might run on till the evening,
and catching a few rays on the beach, I know where I will be. On the
other hand, slotting the meeting in at the beginning of the afternoon,
I might just be carried along by inertia and attend. Of course, I'm
jaded by the TUG board stuff. I've been there and I know that nothing
changes, no matter how strongly you feel about it, and how sincerely
you want to get things done.  By not attending, I surrender my rights
to comment. But I had a wonderful afternoon instead. How often do you
get the chance to swim with dolphins?

Apparently there is also some bizarre notion to reduce the membership
fees, but to make \TUB\ optional. Somehow TTN will become a more
general `journal', carrying some of \TUB's present material. What
present material you may ask?  It is now August 12th and no sign has
been seen of the second edition of 1994 (volume 15 number 2).  \TUB's
calendar suggested that this edition would be mailed on May 23rd.
When last year's final copies came out more or less on time I had
supposed that it had finally managed to get its act together and was
to be produced on a regular and reliable basis. Clearly I was deluded.
What is the problem? I refuse to accept the usual story that it is a
complex journal and that to achieve the standards required the devoted
and underpaid or unpaid editorial volunteers have to devote limitless
time and energy to it. \TUB\ is dying at the altar of quality. If the
journal is to have any credibility it has to come out regularly. Maybe
it really is too complex and \TeX\ is not really up to the production.
Commercial publishers -- to whom we direct much encouragement to use
\TeX\ -- could not allow themselves to be sucked into this cuckoo's
nest.  TUG has to try to be realistic and trim the sails of \TUB\ so
that it can leave port. There are enough enemies of TUG, inside and
outside the user group, who wish to see it dismembered, and who do not
need to be able to point to \TUB\ to see graphic demonstration (or
non-demonstration) of the health of the whole organisation.


Another canard flies: despite the manifest evidence that this
is an international conference (add up the speakers from outside
the US) the old bogey that TUG is essentially a North American
organisation reappears in discussions with some board members.
They want some umbrella organisation to be formed from
representatives of TUG (North America TUG), and the other
user groups, which will somehow `direct' \TeX\ research
and development. A likely tale. However, if TUG does uncouple
itself from \TUB, this could be a serious proposal. If \TUB\ 
is separate, I won't buy it, because the package of TUG plus
\TUB\ membership will be too expensive. The only benefits
that remain of TUG membership are cheaper fees to the
annual meeting, and TTN. Only a very small proportion of
TUG members go to the annual meeting (about 140 this year), and
frankly, \BV\ is a far better deal than TTN (and similarly
for most of the other user group newsletters). Anything
important will appear in the local newsletters. So membership
of TUG will decline further, since there are no perceived
benefits. 


Eventually the conference winds down. Christina Thiele ---
out-going (no pun intended, or even possible) President of TUG ---
makes the closing announcements, failing to thank any
of the local people who actually did make the conference work.
Let me then record a sincere vote of thanks to John Berlin and
Janet Sullivan of the TUG office, who were the `official' TUG representation,
and who held the whole thing together. Similarly, the volunteer
helpers of Suki Bhurji, Wendy Mckay and Katherine Butterfield
were indispensable.  Conferences don't run themselves. 
Since John is now leaving to continue his studies at UCLA
(doing a course on multimedia) he will be sorely missed at
the TUG office.

What does next year hold?  St Petersburg: the one in Florida,
not the revisionist Leningrad or Petrograd. We are promised
a hotel venue and an appeal to the publishing fraternity. 
My heart sinks into the alligator infested swamps.

I think the conference was, on the whole, good value.
It was probably too long. There is always a problem
about fitting the talks in, and thoughts are expressed that
some of the talks should not have been presented. This would
of course cut down on the overall length. I honestly
don't know. The written abstract which speakers
submit is rarely  a good yardstick for selecting
the papers. The best suggestion I have heard was from Angus
Duggan, who suggested a day in which speakers had ten minutes
each to present their abstracts, then a massive set of parallel sessions
the following day(s). You choose what to go to on the basis of the
ten minute abstract. It might be worth trying. At least we
would then have some time for the informal discussions and
scheduled workshops. The venue was certainly good, the residences
were fair, the food edible, the lack of a bar was a blow,
the lecture theatre was too far away, the beach was excellent,
the sun shone relentlessly,
there were plenty meeting rooms/common rooms in the
residence, conference services tended to verge towards the non-sexist
airhead quality, the TUG helpers were overstretched. I do think
it gelled pretty well. It's the most enjoyable TUG conference I've been
to. An experience worth sharing.


\section{Offizin}
Whenever I pontificate about publishing with
\TeX, someone will always bring me to
earth by pointing out that the proceedings
of the 1988 \TeX\ conference in Exeter took
an interminable time to hit the bookshops.
The figure is about two years (I was busy\dots).
It was therefore a pleasant relief to
receive \emph{Offizin} earlier this year
This is a production of \textsc{Dante}, the german-speaking
\TeX\ group. It is a publication designed
to disseminate some of the lectures given
at the group's `\TeX\ days'. I 
worked out just when I presented the paper which
is produced in translation:  it
was February 1991. That makes the \TeX88 book
look much less laggardly! Of course, what I had to say, about
\emph{\TeX\ in Europe and America}, is hopelessly
out of date, but when it appears in my list
of publications, no-one will know that!

Putting this schadenfreude aside, it is an
interesting volume. It should be the first in
a series, a series published by Addison Wesley
(Germany). According to other bits of Addison Wesley,
they don't do conference proceedings, so someone did
some fancy footwork to get this through. Well done.

One quote I managed to extract was `typography
has its experts, but they have no audience'.


\end{Article}
\endinput
\section{A cautionary tale}
Background: I went to the \TeX\ Users Group Annual Meeting.
I taught the \LaTeXe\ course which took place
just before the meeting itself.

Imagine the scene: the course starts at 9 on the Tuesday; I've managed
to arrive in Santa Barbara by 8.30pm on Monday, expecting to be picked
up and taken to the University (UCSB) and do a few last minute things.
At 9 o'clock the lift arrived. The first thing to do is to get copies
of the course notes. As the last bastion of the Empire, the US rarely
uses A4 paper, so although I had a paper copy of the notes on A4, I
hadn't expected to be able to copy those, and had both the source, and
a suitable \texttt{dvi} file to print out, held on both Msdos and Mac
floppies.  But I didn't have a machine to print out on. The situation
was confused, but apparently the original plan had been to use
Macintoshes for the courses, but at the last moment it had been
realised that 2Mbyte Macs are not really sufficient to run \LaTeXe,
and the room had had a small network of NeXT machines installed
instead. What was not installed at that time was \TeX\ and \LaTeX, or
\LaTeXe. Fortunately my fears about a lack of A4 were unfounded and we
could copy from my originals.  At least we did have the new Lamport
\LaTeX\ manual, and I was able to spend the Tuesday morning before
breakfast reading it, just in case there is something in it I hadn't
expected. There isn't.

By the time I got to the teaching lab next day, \TeX\ and \LaTeX\
were installed. The astute will note that I don't say that \LaTeXe\ was
installed. It wasn't. At no point do my notes use \verb+\documentstyle+,
and in fact, I've tried to eliminate all reference to the obsolete
version. Starting off by dropping back to \LaTeX2.09 was not what I
had planned. And of course there was the nagging worry of when 
\LaTeXe\ would be installed. I knew it had to be, since Frank
Mittelbach and Michel Goosens were about to start their course the next day,
using the same machines.

Naturally I start off with a spiel and then get down to hammering the
keyboards a little later. Unlike most previous TUG classes I've
taught, I had no locals who knew the system, or even a local guru to
fall back on. Thus when we came to log on we had a minor upset --
what's the account and password?  Solved by a phone call to the TUG
office. Ever used a NeXT? It's a sort of cross between a reasonable
Unix GUI and a Mac. But it was unfamiliar to all the students (and
me). The dyed in the wool Unix buff found this mouse stuff a bit
painful, and the rest of us found the command line interface lurking
below the surface just a little off-putting. But in general we managed
to cope.  The NeXT comes with an excellent \TeX\ implementation from
Tom Rokicki with a good previewer and \textsf{dvips}. It's a fair
\TeX\ engine, although perhaps a shade slow by current standards, but
adequate for teaching. The main delays in hardware were from the
server, where the disk seemed very slow. One point of confusion to the
students was that we were all in the same account, so we had
sub-directories for each student. Sometimes people worked in the
higher directory. I would not recommend sharing the same directory in
class teaching. Of course this is the same directory that Frank \&
Michel were going to use too, with all of their class\dots

By restructuring the order of presentation I was able
to keep away from topics which were \LaTeXe\ specific.
This was starting to become a problem on the next day, when we
still didn't have the new implementation. I had brought
the latest CTAN installation on floppy, partly anticipating
this problem. Why then didn't I just install it? 
\begin{enumerate}
\item it was a set of \textsf{zip}ped MSDOS files;
\item I didn't have any root or system privileges on the server
\end{enumerate}
or why didn't I just download from CTAN?
\begin{enumerate}
\item[3] we were not on the Internet
\end{enumerate}
Eventually we did find a PC (and I had brought \textsf{pkunzip}) and
downloaded onto floppies which the NeXT could read. By this
time Frank and a local systems person arrived and they happily
spent the afternoon installing stuff. By now we are in
contention with Frank \& Michel for the use of the room.
Naturally we both want access when the class requires it,
and none of us had anticipated structuring our classes to
accommodate this sort of sharing. At least by late on the second
day we could start using \LaTeXe. Things were getting better.

On Thursday, the system was dead. It had crashed. How do you
reboot a NeXT server system? Naturally, Unix systems people
at UCSB are techno-weenies and spend their nights doing
whatever Unix people do with their lives. They don't come in till
about 11 at the earliest. This is not good. When all else
fails, you can always try a power interrupt (\ie switch it
off and on again). Ever found the on/ off switch on a NeXT? It
is well hidden. Fortunately, John Berlin of the TUG office managed
to get things going. This eats into our lab time, with Frank \& Michel breathing
down our necks. And although I supposedly have a seminar room
in the same building, no-one seems to know where it is, exactly:
hand waving `down the corridor and up some stairs' descriptions lack
precision.

This morning (Friday), the laser printer is out of paper.
We have a sort of arrangement with the reception desk
that they will do little gofering jobs. This seems to
fit the bill. A digression. UCSB is famous for a couple of
courses. Surfing 101 and Tanning 101 are among these. The latter
is designed for the more intellectually able. Rachel, on the desk,
was majoring in Surfing. The exchange ran approximately
as follows:
\begin{description}
\item[me:]We seem to be out of paper for the laser printer.
\item[Rachel:] Oh, really?
\item[me:] Is there a number to  ring to obtain some more? 
\item[Rachel:]Yes.
\item[me:]Could you do that for me?
\item[Rachel]Uh-huh. 
\end{description}
She picks up phone, dials, I return to the lab.
A few minutes later she pops her head round the
door to announce that `We don't have any small paper, will
the larger size do?'
A little startled by the idea 
of using the A3 equivalent, I grunted assent.
As you will probably have guessed,
we got 12 inch fan fold continuous printer paper. That's what
computers use. One of the class took over and obtained
a ream of copy paper. Simple.
The remainder of the day has few problems. By this time
I had managed to obtain a copy of the Companion, so that the
class has a chance to see what extra goodies are available.
They already have Lamport's new \LaTeX~2e (2nd edition) book,
although I had forbidden them to read it until
after the course ended. 

What lessons can be learned? The first thing that struck me was
that \LaTeXe\ is perhaps not quite as widely adopted,
or even known about, as I had anticipated. People coming on courses
are seldom TUG members, and are along either as a sort of refresher,
or to add to their existing `document processing' skills. I had
some secretarial staff and some editorial staff (and a sort of overviewer).
They are not mainstream \TeX ies who read \texttt{comp.text.tex}, or TTN,
and far less \TUB. Most of them would be going back to a \LaTeX2.09
installation, although I hope I gave them enough impetus to
get their systems people to install \LaTeXe.
We really have to push information about \LaTeXe\ out more
widely.

It does help to have liaison at hand. And to have someone
come and check that all is well each morning. In an ideal world,
the logging on/ password, NeXT familiarisation, 
the system crash or the paper shortage would  have
been but minor hiccups.

The small class size (about 7) was a boon. I reckon it takes four
days to get through my course. Thanks to the ease of use of the NeXT,
the keyboard skills of the class (and their general computer
familiarity), and the small class size, I think we could have
trimmed that down to three and a half. The problem is always
getting round each member of the class. If you spend 5 minutes
with each, a class of twelve takes an hour to get round. Simple
arithmetic. 
Extra exercises for the swift are useful. It gives you something
to absorb their enthusiasm, while allowing the slower members to
concentrate on reinforcing the essentials.

Sharing a lab reduces flexibility and requires that you plan things
much more carefully. Knowing the requirement in advance helps.

Ensure that the class eat together. This sounds weird, but let me
explain.  Some of the class did not live in the residences on campus.
Their course fee did not cover lunch. Therefore they had to go and eat
somewhere else.  They didn't then know when the rest of us were
heading back, and this could delay starting the afternoon session. A
small point, but it all adds or subtracts to the smooth running of the
class. After all, these people pay good money to come on this course,
we have to ensure they get a fair deal.


