\title{Editorial}
\begin{article}
\section{Calling on you}
It seems to have been a while since we had a `normal' issue of \BV;
after the effort last autumn to get the FAQ issue to our readers,
events keep overtaking us, and the last issue was so full it omitted
almost all our regular information. Even now, with summer upon us, and
\TeX\ conferences coming up thick and fast, \BV\ still needs quality
articles. Please send in material to benefit fellow \TeX xies.

The deadline for \BV\ is always the same --- the beginning of the
last week of odd months.

\section{Looking different}
Have you noticed anything strange about this \BV\ yet? Yes, it is not typeset
in the eponymous Baskerville font. 
Since the article later in this issue by Michel Goossens
and Sebastian Rahtz discusses how to create instances of Adobe's Multiple
Master fonts, and \TeX\ metrics for those instances. it seemed a useful
idea to set a whole issue in Minion, as a practical demonstration. 
We do not claim that the variables chosen to make the instances are
especially good (our bold is rather weedy, for instance), but we hope
it will interest some readers.  Make of it
what you will --- Baskerville itself will be back next time.

\section{Sad resignation of \ukt\ committee member}
At the committee meeting of \ukt\ in May, Jonathan Fine announced his
resignation because of ongoing disagreement with other
committee members, and that he would not be standing for re-election.
Admirers of \BV's regular appearance
over the last 18 months have reason to regret his departure, as he
played a great part in the \BV\ distribution and (like all the
committee) worked hard at proof-reading. We hope his regular supply of
articles (interrupted for this issue) will not cease.

\section{Whither \protect\LaTeX?}
Earlier this year, \ukt\ wrote to all 1994 members who had not
renewed to ask if they were sure; Richard Preston of Oxford University
Press took the trouble to write back and made some interesting points which
are worth answering publicly. He said:
``\ldots While I have the opportunity, I might as well air one or two
frustrations:

1. I don't know what form \LaTeX3 is going to take, but it seems
to me that if \TeX\ is not going to become the Betamax of DTP
systems then it has to have a WYSIWYG interface. The current
palaver that one has to go through even to change fonts really
isn't acceptable to 99\% of the people who use these systems.
Ideally it should be possible to view a WYSIWYG window and a
window containing the source code, with changes made in either
window being immediately reflected in the other (I believe
Borland's Delphi works on this principle for Pascal
programming).

2. I now work in OUP's electronic publishing department, and many
of our products are simultaneous book and CD-ROM publications,
using essentially the same text data. There is an obvious need
for a typesetting system that can produce typeset pages based on
tagged ASCII files, which can then be used in the CD-ROM
version. We currently have to translate typesetters coded files
into SGML tagged text, and while this is not difficult, a system
that could translate \LaTeX's generic codes into SGML would be a
godsend.

3. \TeX\ and \LaTeX\ appear to have become the DTP equivalent of
UNIX --- an extremely powerful whole built up from many powerful
sub-units, but usable only by those with enough time and
enthusiasm to really learn it. As an example, we bought Y\&Y
\TeX's setup for use here; it is extremely good and has served us
very well, but the initial installation and messing around with
font encoding nearly drove me insane. I know this is a
commercial product and is nothing to do with TUG, but it does
reflect the willingness of the TeX community to accept that
using TeX should be a struggle. Compare this with the `install
and away you go' use of Quark or Pagemaker.

This letter seem to have turned into something of a rant, and
I'm sorry for that, but it is born out of a genuine concern that
a work of genius like \TeX\ is being denied the usage it deserves
because of a lack of awareness within TUG. I've sat through too
many lectures on how to use Cyrillic or Hebrew, or the merits or
de-merits of \verb|\frenchspacing| to believe that this letter will
alter \TeX's course one iota, but at least it's made me feel
better.''

in reply to which your \BV\ editor and the \ukt\ chairman made the
following points:
\begin{enumerate}
\item Indeed, you can have this effect of immediate feedback if you
  use Blue Sky Research's excellent Lightning Textures product. I
  think the interface you get should be separated from the underlying
  structure of \TeX and \LaTeX3, and that style design is not a matter
  of daily usage. You don't change fonts in a document, you change it
  in a style file
\item There are various projects to translate \LaTeX\ to SGML
  reliably; interested parties may like to contact Seamus McCague of
  ICPC, Dublin (\texttt{seamus@icpc.ie})  who have developed a
  sophisticated solution.
\item It is true that some publications need, and can afford, the
  detailed level of hand-crafted design that an interactive system can
  provide when used by a skilled operator; however I imagine that, for
  example, you do not typeset your dictionaries on such a
  system---there is an important part of publishing where highly
  automated and high quality typesetting is needed and this includes a
  lot of technical publishing where accuracy of layout is too vital to
  be left to individual operators.
\end{enumerate}
We appreciate Richard's points, but what exactly do you (our members)
and those of TUG, want us to do? The various \TeX\ user groups are
aware of these issues, but they do not control software development,
and largely act as communication channels and meeting points. We (the
\ukt\ committee) very much welcome suggestions and guidance about
actions you think we can take.

%\section{Coming up}
%Would you believe that Fig.~\ref{stereo} came from a set of \TeX\
%macros? Details in a future issue of Tugboat or \BV.
%
%\begin{figure*}
%\centerline{\epsfig{figure=stereo.ps,clip}}
%\caption{``Autostereogram'' generated using \TeX\ by Jacques Richer
  %(Montreal)}
%\label{stereo}
%\end{figure*}
\end{article}