\title{An Informal Review of TUG '93: July 26th--30th,  Aston, Birmingham UK}
\author[Kees van der Laan]{Kees van der Laan\\Dutch \TeX\ Users Group}
\begin{article}


\section{Highlights}
\begin{itemize} 
\item Announcement of \LaTeX2.9e; the {\em \LaTeX\ Companion} book
  will be available in the fall, which contains among other items, the
  NFSS2 documentation
\item NTS: organizational and technical issues were surveyed
\item Y\&Y's scalable outline fonts
\item Adobe's Acrobat, and PDF (portable document format),
      demoed by Doug Henderson (Blue Sky Research, and Adobe $\beta$-tester)
\item Tutorials: What is \LaTeX?, Flavours of \TeX, Virtual fonts,
      all for free
\item Greenwade's CTAN: Comprehensive \TeX\ Archive Network, released
\item The {\sl TUGly Telegraph\/} spread the news (a mini
      conference newspaper)
\end{itemize}

This report\footnote{Cut down for inclusion in \BV; a fuller version
will be published in MAPS, the journal of the Dutch \TeX\ Users
Group.} contains the main issues as perceived by the author.  The
idea is to get the flavour and my view of the good items across, at
the expense of completeness.

\section{Introduction}
The meeting of the organized \TeX\ Users of the year was TUG '93 at
Aston.  It attracted some 165 participants, with a few from
financially diasadvantaged countries, thanks to a bursary fund. Aston
campus is pleasantly located near the centre of Birmingham, Brum for
short. A rich variety of courses was offered before and after the
conference. In general the program offered nice presentations,
workshops, panels and the like, with the vendor booths fewer in number
than usual, Blue Sky Research being sadly absent because of being
informed too late.  Despite this, to attend the conference was a real
thrill.  Much attention was paid to details; for example every badge
contained a nice proverb, not forgetting the superb logo.  In general
all was done by creative and playful minds.  Next to the lecture room
there was a discussion lounge---with among other things some computers
with e-mail and FTP facilities, such that participants could read
their e-mail and exchange files---and a vendor booth, alias lounge,
for display of materials brought along by TUG and the various LUGs.

\section{Conference}
For the most it was a one-stream schedule.  Along with the program we
obtained a copy of the pre-proceedings, which be published in \TUB\ 
14.3.  Prior to the conference there were the free tutorials: `What is
\LaTeX\ all about?', `Flavours of \TeX', and `Virtual fonts'. During
the conference we had workshops about MakeIndex, \BibTeX, and virtual
fonts.  And there were ample course offerings before and after the
conference.

In the next section attention is paid to the highlights neglecting
the day-to-day sequence of events as well as the session titles.

\subsection{Keynotes}
The keynotes were: Jackowski and Ry\'cko---detailing what happens at
the beginning and at the end of a paragraph; Christina Thiele---about
the future of \TeX\ and TUG; and Joachim Lammarsch---presenting his
view on the historical and organisational issues related to NTS, the
New Typesetting System.  Later Phil Taylor---the technical director of
the project---aptly complemented this with the technical aspects. A
nice example of international cooperation.

\subsection{Presentations}
\begin{itemize}
\item Michael Doob's paper about the practical use of virtual fonts
  was very illuminating. Related to this was the work of
  Alan Jeffrey for manipulating {\em vpl\/} files.

\item It was rumoured that John Plaice's $\Omega$-\TeX\ will be a nice
  extension of \TeX.  It is difficult to overlook its virtues or its
  impact. 

\item Derick Wood's theoretical model of tables was very intriguing.
  The burning question in here is whether we can develop something
  like normal specification and transformation to the clearest
  formatted represention (semi)automatically.

\item Daniel Taupin surprised us all with a new aspect of his \TeX\ 
  work: \TeX\ and Metafont working together to produce maps.  Later,
  and separately, he also reported about new developments in
  Music\TeX.  

\item Martin Bryan's Guide to DSSSL was a bit too theoretical.  Upon
  request he assured us that this extension is there mainly to handle
  so-called active documents.

\item Michel Lavaud preceded his As\TeX\ lecture by some analogies of
  the \TeX\ language with natural language---both ambiguous and
  `dangerous'---and with the FORTRAN language---both stable, but
  deficient.  The latter has gained a firm place within the scientific
  work desk, despite its deficiences and other imperfections.

\item Laurent Siebenmann in one of his papers proposed a new method for
  handling the spacing around in-line math. 

\item Roger Hunter discussed {\em Scientific Word} and
  emphasized that the future of \TeX\ has all to do
  with better user interfaces. It is fun to remember all the
  various items people have prophesied to be essential for the
  future of \TeX.  At the user as well as the language level. 

\item W\l odek Bzyl lectured about the use of literate programming
  tools to build upon other work: \TUB\ style customization via change
  files and pretty printing of \TeX\ code, along with providing an
  index.  By this approach the styles of the GUST bulletin make use of
  the experience embodied in the \TUB\ style files, with GUST's
  modifications easily added. Really a sensible approach and worthy of
  being studied and followed by other editors.

\item Berthold Horn dwelled upon the paucity of math fonts ready for
    use with \TeX, and a checklist to counteract this phenomenon.
    A very lucid and scholarly paper. 

\item George Greenwade made the CTAN (Comprehensive \TeX\ Archive
    Network) go public. A quantum leap!

\item At the macro writing level we had Jonathan Fine's ``Finite
    State Automata in \TeX'' and my ``Syntactic Sugar'', and ``Sorting
    within \TeX''. The syntactic sugar paper also touches upon the
    software engineering aspects of \TeX\ macro writing.

  \item Very intriguing was Mary Dyson's paper about teaching
    typography, as a spin-off of the DIDOT project.  It has
    all to do with getting your priorities right; don't sub-optimize!
    In essence the issues relevant to Electronic Publishing were
    presented in the right order.
\item Richard Southall elaborated on his `buses and weirdness' effects
when using \TeX, naively. I'm hoping that this paper will finally 
appear in print.
\end{itemize}

\section{LUGs}
Only CyrTUG and Ukraine TUG (officially to be founded in the
  autumn) talked in public about their history and revealed their
plans.  Both will have autumn meetings, open for the \TeX\ community at
large to attend.

\section{Upcoming, or go where the action is}
For next year the working idea is to have Euro\TeX\ '94 organized by
GUST in Poland.  TUG '94 will be in Santa Barbara, TUG '95 in Florida,
and TUG '96 in Europe again. And in the meantime the autumn is crowded
with meetings: Ukraine TUG,\footnote{At the moment of writing this
report we received the sad news that their leader Yuri Melnichuk has
passed away, due to a heart attack.} CyrTuG (early October), the
Nordic and NTG's November meetings, next to DANTE's regular and cosy
Stammtisch, \ldots, and GUST in the spring: watch out for the calendar
in TUGboat.


\section{Conclusion}
Meeting people and stimulating each other---that is what
conferences are for. This was a particularly good one.

Thanks to you all!
\end{article}