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\title{Malcolm's Gleanings}
\author{Malcolm Clark}
\begin{Article}
\section{Indefatigable}
There hardly seems a month goes by when I do not pick up a journal or magazine
with an article by one of \LaTeX's most indefatigable proselytisers, Allan
Reese. This month it was \textit{Axis} (a rather specialised journal for
`Academic Computing and Information Systems'). In a rather fetchingly titled
article, `!`Hoja! Herr B\"oll, \c Ca va?' he champions the use of \LaTeX\ as a
suitable  medium for email in order to accommodate all those annoying foreign
languages which have accents. Well, we've been here before, but it is
still good to see Allan determinedly and relentlessly spreading the word. An
accolade to that man. 

\section{Synchronicity}
In the last \BV\ I extolled \textsc{Gut}enberg and their
\textit{Cahiers}, noting that their next volume would be on character
coding. This volume arrived on my desk a week or so ago. It began with
a brief \textit{In memoriam} to Cathy Booth. Cathy attended several of
the early \textsc{Gut}enberg meetings, and had many friends in the
french-speaking \TeX\ community. It was a very thoughtful and touching
gesture to dedicate the volume to her. A similar event was perpetuated
at the TUG conference, where Sebastian Rahtz presented a prize for
best paper to T.~V.~Raman in her name. Personally, I can think of few
people more worthy than T.~V.\ to receive any sort of prize -- and on top
of that, he's a really nice person.

\section{\mime}
Our out going and retiring chair, Chris Rowley, points out that
\texttt{x-dvi} is already a \mime\ type. In theory this should mean
that you can include a \texttt{dvi} file with an email message and the
recipient will be able to read it. I'd be reluctant to contemplate
this outside the arcane world of Unix. In any case, what I had in mind
was to have a simple viewer which exploited Adobe's Multiple Master
fonts, rather than (say) Computer Modern. It would be interesting to
know if this \mime\ type is used in real life, or whether it merely
represents good intentions. In passing, it was serendipitous that the
last \BV\ was printed in Adobe Minion, one of the two main Multiple
Master fonts. But at least it almost demonstrated that \LaTeX\ and
Multiple Masters can co-exist.


\section{What I did on my summer hols}
I've stopped going to international \TeX\ conferences, and I no longer
do much \TeX\ or \LaTeX\ teaching (the former on moral and ethical
grounds: those and the fact that you have to tell your audience to
suspend disbelief for the first morning: ``you do \textit{what}?''),
but I was inveigled into giving a course on \LaTeXe, the only true
\LaTeX, in Malaysia. Imagine bringing latex to Malaysia. It is an
ironic footnote that the rubber plantations there are being cut down,
or the timber being used for wood, rather than for the harvesting of
latex. This course turned out to be one of the most enjoyable that I
have taught. Besides the pleasure of teaching a really nice bunch of
people (and by and large, \TeX ies tend to be in that
category%
%\footnote{Having said that, a few cronies were trying to
%  decide just who are the really, really nice, but not boring, \TeX\ 
%  people. We only managed Don Knuth, T V Raman, Tom Rokicki and Nelson
%  Beebe. Much more difficult than 10 famous Belgians.}
) this was
virtually the first time I have had access to teaching facilities
where I didn't have to waste half the first day teaching people how to
use the operating system and its interaction with \TeX. I had two
teaching rooms: one with pc\TeX\ for Windows, the other with
\textit{Textures} 1.7.5. Since I had to do a little of the software
installation (pc\TeX, for example, doesn't come with all the bits and
pieces I might have expected), I can also vouch for the relative
robustness and ease of the installations. pc\TeX\ is only a couple of
years behind \textit{Textures} -- \iec where \textit{Textures} was
maybe two or three years ago. They should almost catch up within a
year or so. Naturally there is a catch: both these implementations
cost money. Since I now have copies of both these implementations I'll
say more about their limitations and ease of use at some future point,
but the issue here is that some of the pain and difficulty of learning
\LaTeX\ was removed `at a a stroke' by the availability of a
responsive and easy to use point and click version of \TeX.

Naturally, since the predominant language of Malaysia, Melayu (or
Bahasa Malay) is not English, they wanted \LaTeX\ to reflect the
difference. Fortunately it is a Latin script and they had the very
great sense to spell it phonetically, with no accents. One difficulty
is that many words form their plural by doubling the word, separated
by a hyphen: \egc it is as if the plural of sheep were sheep-sheep.
Fine, but how will \TeX\ hyphenate this? The answer is that it won't.
By default, \TeX\ does not add hyphens to words which already contain
a hyphen. That's one of the reasons that the Cork encoding has a
`link-hyphen'.  With eight bit encoding, therefore, it can be done.
The other problem, of language localisation (turning `Appendix' to
`Lampiran' or `Contents' to `Kandungan') was wonderfully easy thanks
to Babel. In there you will find \texttt{bahasa.dtx}. This is a
language conversion which claims to handle Bahasa, which is closer to
an Indonesian `dialect' of Malay. I gained a lot of kudos from a quick
hack of what will become \texttt{melayu.dtx}. There really is lots to
be said, not just for \LaTeXe, but the comprehensive installation
which accompanies it.

\section{When shall I rebuild \LaTeXe?}
Since \LaTeXe\ pops up every six months now, there is an interesting question
developing: when should you download it from the archive and rebuild your
installation?. There is no point taking it as soon as it is released, since you
know that the first patch will be released about 26 hours after the
announcement. Experience seems to indicate that patch level 3 represents
\LaTeXe\ approaching its asymptote. Having said that, I couldn't build that
patch level on my Mac (despite everything I said earlier\dots). 

\section{\etex\ escapes}
\etex, the first stage in a new improved (but not called) \TeX\ has
been sort of released. DOS versions were distributed at the TUG
conference in St Petersburg Beach.  There are also unconfirmed rumours
that a VMS Alpha version is lurking somewhere south of the Thames. But
what is it all for? Can anyone point me to a description of the real
and tangible benefits which will accrue from its adoption? I know how
the committee structure works, and who does the work, thanks to Phil
Taylor's \TUB\ notes, but I don't yet know what real world
typesetting problems it will solve, at a stroke.

\section{The empty vessel}
\dots giveth a greater sound than the full
barrel\footnote{\textit{John Lyly}, 1579, Euphues, the Anatomy of
  Wit.}.  Goodbye special directors: having been implicated in the
creation of TUG's special directors\footnote{\textit{one} of the
  allegations of my influence on TUG which is based in fact.}, it's
good to see that TUG has now dispensed with them.  The special
directors were the chairs or presidents (in the case of those whose
boots grew) of the `older' European users groups. When they were
adopted onto the TUG Board it was a useful way to try to redress the
very strong US-ocentric focus which TUG had. Now I hear that the
Americans are complaining that TUG is a European dominated
organisation which just happens to have its headquarters in San
Francisco (this week).

Barbara Beeton's hold on \TUB\ has been reduced. It will have been
obvious that one of TUG's major problems, and one of the reasons its
membership has fallen to unsustainable levels, has been the persistent
non-appearance of \TUB. Some of the responsibility for this has to
laid at the feet of Barbara (one of the nicest people I could ever
hope to meet, whose knowledge of \TeX\ is legendary, whose standards
are Knuth-like, and whose skills in the art of delegation are
limited). The production of \TUB\ will now be based in Florida.
Editorial matters remain within Barbara's
control. Incoming President Michel Goossens has placed the production
of \TUB\ as a top priority for TUG.

As predicted, Florida was hot and sweaty. Some say it was the
sweatiest on record, but I guess they didn't go partying in the flesh
pots of Santa Barbara.  Mind you, not much partying went on at St
Petersburg Beach -- and no bowling.\footnote{\emph{Clearly Malcolm's sources
  did not tell him about the `Three Dancing \TeX xies', Tom Rokicki,
  Petr Sojka and Michael Cohen --- Editor}}

Just as this column was the first to reveal that Michel Goossens (of
the \LaTeX\ \textit{Companion} fame) was to be the next TUG President,
it can also reveal that Sebastian Rahtz is the new Secretary,
Mimi Jett Treasurer and the startling Judy Johnson is 
Vice-President (she startled me!).  With the Rahtz--Goossens dynamic
duo at the helm we can expect some interesting developments at TUG. At
the very least, \TUB\ should start to appear regularly.

You may wonder how Sebastian manages to accomplish so much. A
carefully inspection of his name is revealing: S.~P.~Q.~Rahtz. Not
many people realise that this is actually a shorthand alias for three
people, S., P.\ and Q.\ Rahtz.  Sebastian is merely the public face of
this triumvirate. There is no other rational explanation. QED

Another of S.\ or P.\ or Q.\ Rahtz' good ideas was auctioning off signed
Knuth books to raise money for the Euro\TeX\ bursary. This was made
easier by the presence of Don Knuth to sign the books, and Addison
Wesley's generosity in donating them. But what a good idea; and what a
worthy cause.
% As long as no-one withdrew their money on hearing that
%the money was already assigned\footnote{an obscure, scurrilous and
%  unjustified reference to \textsc{Dante} who did something very
%  similar.}.
\end{Article}