<html><head><meta name="color-scheme" content="light dark"></head><body><pre style="word-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;">\centerline{\bf Editorial}
\centerline{\bf\TeX\ considered as the Zahir}
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This seems to have been a good year for \TeX.
Communication and distribution has improved enormously.
The rebirth of \hax, and even more significantly,
its redistribution within the UK has been a boon
to those who are now able to receive it easily
and conveniently over Janet.

Spurred on by this success (and the large amount
of useful material in \hax), Peter Abbott at Aston
University started a similar scheme in Britain.
This is growing steadily, and proving to be a useful
source of information and communication.

Peter has also collected together much of the
public domain \TeX\ material, like the \LaTeX\
style files, and it is possible to pick these
files up  electronically from Aston. 

This is fine for the academic community, or at least
parts of it, but less useful to those who are
isolated (or insulated) from ivory towers. The
Unix community, with UUCP can also indulge, so the
picture is not solely one of lofty academic
separation. Bulletin boards can be substitutes,
and as \DW's note demonstrates, those bulletin boards
could be a long way away.

One of my concerns has always been the isolated \TeX\
user. I don't feel that he or she is particularly
well-served by {\sl The \TeX book} and a micro
version of \TeX. At the very least you need to
talk to someone else, just to be sure that you
haven't gone completely crazy. TUG and TUGboat
go some way to convincing people that they are not alone,
most particularly through the membership list. But
too few people join. I was looking for the addresses
of some well known \TeX nophiles --- look in the
TUG membership listing I thought: were they there?
Of course not. It could be that their institution
has membership, but\dots

I realised too that not everyone really gets to know about
TUG. Where is it mentioned in the book? Appendix J
is the only source of information. By the time you
get that far through the book you should be experiencing
terminal brain saturation. It's probably too late by then.
Pick up the \LaTeX\ book: where is {\it any\/}
mention of TUG? (I have to be careful these days
saying anything about \LaTeX, ever since 
Phil Taylor and
I were stigmatised
by Sebastian Rahtz as `\LaTeX-haters').
Spivak mentions TUG on page 5 of `Joy of \TeX',
increasing my admiration for the man. The manuals
which come with the micro versions are even worse
at promoting TUG. Why? Most software vendors work
hard at creating active User Groups. Here there is
one ready made, and the vendors appear to ignore it.
It would be no great problem to include a reply-paid
postcard in each copy of a micro version of \TeX,
entitling the purchaser to one  year's free
subscription. How about it Addison-Wesley\slash
Personal \TeX\slash FTL systems\slash $n^2$\slash
Kettler-EDV\slash etc?

We also need a higher profile in the popular press.
Is there some good reason why an article on \TeX\
has not yet appeared in New Scientist? or in
the computer pages of one of the `quality' daily
newspapers? Preferably written by someone who knows
what he or she is talking about (i.e.~not a journalist).
It appears that \TeX\ is making some slight headway
in the DTP aware magazines. But to take an example,
at the Desktop Publishing Show  run by Pira
a few weeks ago in
Islington, a Yearbook was `given' to each
registrant. \TeX\ in its various guises turns up
a few times, but frankly, the descriptions were
not wholly accurate. If Pira can't get it right,
I can't really expect the press to. I thought
the show was pretty dull anyway --- {\it Pagemaker}
(yawn) and {\it Ventura} (yawn) are not terribly
exciting. Interleaf was as good as ever, especially
now it can do equations (but what a price!).
IBM had their 600 dpi electro-erosion printer
there, besides their new \ps\ (yawn) Ricoh-engined
laser
printer. It could have been worse, IBM might
have adopted \TeX! Anyway, Apple blew them away
as usual --- this time with HyperCard: at last the
potential for electronic publishing is beginning
to be recognised. But by now you know how I feel
about Apple (aren't their {\sc tv} ads dreadful ---
I almost expect to see Mel Smith doing them).

Another positive step has been the arrival of TUG
courses in Europe. Courses were presented at Exeter
and at Bergen. Unfortunately the projected Groningen
course was not run. \MF\ has become sufficiently
available that TUG is now presenting a course on it,
in the US.

At last CMR is much more widely available. Personal
\TeX\ recently upgraded to CMR (Addison-Wesley please
note), and took the opportunity to change
to ArborText's |.pk| drivers. While the CMR upgrade
is free (it only affects the format files and the
|tfm|'s), a nominal charge will be made for upgrading the
drivers. Another extra from Personal \TeX\ is
the availability of the Bitstream fonts. I hope
we will have more details on this soon. pc\TeX\
users should contact Ewart North of Uni\TeX.

\rightline{\sl Malcolm Clark}



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