The State of TUG
Michel Goossens
CERN,
Geneva, Switzerland
goossens@cern.ch
This is the beginning of a new year, and my first thoughts go to you
and your families. I wish you all the very best for 1997. I hope that
the coming months will bring you happiness, success, and above all
good health. May all your long-lasting dreams come true!
Are those computers helping us?
Fewer than three years separate us from the day when the first digit of
the year becomes a two, and thousands of pages have already been
written about the disaster that will descend upon all file systems when
the clock strikes midnight on December 31st 1999. It is feared that
algorithms for storing date and time for files and other information
will break down at that very moment. I am convinced that, with still
more than a thousand days to go, a solution will be found. Yet the
bill to fix this "trivial" problem will certainly run into the
billions of dollars, and users and system managers all over the world
will have to patch or upgrade their software.
The reason I mention this is to show the vulnerability of our modern
lifestyle to quite small problems in the functioning of the software or
hardware of computers that are controlling almost every aspect of
human society. Digital telephone exchanges, satellite channels,
fly-by-wire planes and steer-by-wire ships, alarm systems used by
police and fire brigades, life-survival systems in hospitals,
surveillance systems, computers for predicting the weather, handling
data of the stock-market, controlling mobile telephones and other huge
databases..., the list goes on and on. How much time, money and
human lives have been lost when a single element in one of these
electronic chains malfunctions. In many cases the main problem is a
mismatch between man and machine: planes have fallen out of the sky
and nuclear power plants have gone awry, putting the lives of hundreds
of people in jeopardy.
It has become clear that computer tools and programs have not lived
up to their expectations. Both developers and users of these systems
overestimated their capabilities in the field of integration and
streamlining human tasks. At the same time they underestimated the
need for training and planning to benefit optimally from these complex
tools.
Everybody goes global
Over the last few years we have observed an exponential increase in
the number of people connected to the Internet, and every school,
administration, indeed every "self-respecting" body in every country now
has its Web server. Tens of millions of surfers have spent hours, if
not the equivalent of days, in front of their computer screens, jumping
in hyper-space from the text of the first act of Macbeth, to a .gif
image of the Queen, an MPEG movie of the pictures sent back by
the Hubble Space telescope, a quick tour of the Caribbean to plan the
next holiday -- or just to dream -- before turning to the weather
forecast, the timetable of trains or plains, a map of the next town
you want to visit, the list of software tools you need to solve your
son's school assignment, or the offerings of the universities in
California where your daughter wants to attend college next term. All
this information is there, at your fingertips, one or two clicks away.
Of course, you also want to be part of it, to be there where the
action is. So you decide to be present on the Net with your CV,
complemented with a list of publications, a few of them online in
PostScript, or even HTML, plus a picture of Family -- Wife,
Kids, Labrador Jessy, and Tiger, the cat -- it is now a must, part of
our cyber-culture. Everybody with a phone line can connect to the
Global Village at almost no cost, and Internet providers are queueing
at your (virtual) door to offer their services.
Billion of bytes at your fingertips
In parallel with the spread of cheap computer connections we have
witnessed an equally significant development in the form of the
ubiquity of the CD-ROM. These days, almost no computer is sold
without this little technological marvel included. Each of these
little 12 cm plates weighing a mere 18 grams can contain about 700
million characters, enough to run most of today's applications. The
Britannica or Microsoft's Encarta are but two titles amongst several
dozen encyclopaedia which give us instantaneous access to an enormous
wealth of data and pictures wherever we are. Almost every conceivable
form of information has been or is being made available on
CD-ROM, and complete distributions of programs or data, which
would take hours to down-load via a MODEM, can be sent for the
price of a letter to all those who need them. Moreover, CD-ROM
recorders have become affordable (today you can buy a good model for
about $500, and prices continue to fall) so that everyone can now
store on such a CD 700 Mbytes of data: programs, your family
photo album in JPEG, your holiday movie in MPEG, or,
perhaps more practically, a backup of your hard-disk.
Yet, this is only the beginning. Computers are now on sale which
contain custom chips for a direct interpretation of MPEG (a
spin-off of high definition television), and in a couple of years it
will be possible to use the new-generation high-definition television
set for all kinds of tasks, from browsing the Internet over optical
cable at speeds of several Mbytes/sec, to playing complete films with
sound in quadraphony. You will be able to enjoy an opera as though you
were sitting in the Metropolitan. The Digital Versatile Disk
(DVD), a new generation CD-ROM, is able to store between
4.5 and some 18 Gbytes of data, thanks to three technological
breakthroughs: shorter laser wavelengths, two-face recording, and
writing multiple vertical layers. This allows for a three-hour
feature film, and also opens up a whole series of new possibilities in
the field of multimedia.
TeX and the Global Village
But what about TeX and TUG in all this? If you look at the
number of members of our Organization over the years [See
TUGboat 17(4)], you observe that after a build-up in the
mid-eighties, the membership stabilized in the range of 3000-4000
members, but has fallen by about 10--20%/year since 1991. The
rise of TeX about ten years ago coincides with the time when more
and more people began to be exposed to the personal computer, while
the mainframe was still very important. For the first time scientific
secretaries, professors, and students had easy access to a computer
and were able to typeset scientific documents themselves, obtaining at
the same time an appreciable improvement of the generated printed
text. TeX became the de-facto standard in the world of mathematics
at about that time, and even today many mathematicians send TeX
code via email to their colleagues when discussing their work.
But since then local and wide-area networks have diminished the
dependence on centralized systems, and most of what a TeX user
needs can be transferred conveniently from CTAN, or copied from one
of the TeX CD-ROMs now on sale. Today, publishers prefer
commercial systems, such as Word, FrameMaker, PageMaker, or Quark
Express, since they provide good control on the layout of the final
page, or use SGML-based systems, since they allow easy
integration of the information in databases, and its re-use in
various forms. While TeX is still the text-processing engine in
some WYSIWYG products like Scientific Word, other tools, like
Mathematica, claim to have developed a better presentation engine for
showing text and mathematics on screen, and they provide various output
formats, such as TeX, HTML, and PostScript.
Donald Knuth has often wondered why developers have not taken his work
in the TeX arena further and come up with extensions in those areas
where TeX seemed to have shortcomings. It is only recently that
eTeX and Omega have started to address some of these problems,
but a lot of progress still remains to be made to adapt TeX fully
to the needs of the "Windows Generation", where everything is
controlled via a visual user interface. The batch-like behavior of TeX
confuses many people and, although the quality of the output generated
by TeX is in many cases still far better than that obtained by
other text processors, its non-intuitive interface, its steep learning
curve and, above all, the intricacies to control the micro-layout, in
particular to place material precisely on the page, turn off most new
and younger users. They prefer the easier-to-use and more intuitive
WYSIWYG systems, which, moreover, are better integrated with
the system environment, and allow easy cut and paste between various
office applications.
Fewer members, bigger tasks
So, what can we do? I am convinced that the majority of the present
TUG members have been with us for a long time. We seem to have
lost members because they have changed activities and no longer need
TeX in their professional life, or are convinced that other tools
can do a text processing job as good as TeX. Another fact is that in
the early nineties, when membership numbers began to decline,
"local" TeX user groups were set up in France (GUTenberg),
Germany (DANTE), the Netherlands (NTG), the Nordic
countries (NTUG), and the United Kingdom (UKTUG). It
goes without saying that such groups can serve their local user
communities better (and more cheaply), so that we expect that a
fraction of our members transferred to those groups instead. Finally,
economic considerations have also played a role, and we must accept
that many may find it more difficult these days to write that $55
cheque, since other priorities have overtaken the importance of
TUG membership.
For the past few years we have witnessed a drop in the number of people
attending TeX conferences. It is also proving ever more difficult
to find volunteers for participating in working groups or other
TeX -related activities. If you look at the present members of the
TUG Board, you will recognize well-known names from the TeX
world. However, no young new blood has been found in the last three or
four years to take part in running TUG or to work on TUGboat.
Last year we had only one candidate for six open Board positions.
This year we need at least five people to
step forward to serve for a four-year term on the Board together with
the five remaining members. And there is also a new President to be
chosen. Too many good and experienced experts have left the active
TeX world, and very few newcomers have replaced them. We need
enthusiasm, expertise, willingness to serve the TeX community, and
this is a plea to you, dear reader, to make your voice heard and to
show your active support of the TeX community.
The TUG Board by itself cannot perform miracles. Our respective
employers demand an ever-increasing portion of our time, and at work
TeX is rapidly losing ground compared with HTML editors,
which turn electronic texts directly into globally accessible
information, with the poor quality of the printed output considered as
a tolerable evil (who wants to print, anyway...). If we do not want
to disappear into oblivion, we shall have to adapt to the Internet
paradigm and accept that other text processors can also put words on
the page or screen. We must try and live in symbiosis with these
systems, and see how we can help TeX users in those areas of the
world where publicly available tools are still important (although
freely available HTML editors are already commonplace on most
computer platforms). TUG should emphasize Internet access (via ftp,
WWW), produce TeX CD-ROMs, and continue to publish
TUGboat, which should become a journal not only for the experienced
TeX user, but also for the novice. We should also open up its
columns more and more to what is happening in the field of document
handling at large.
Actions have been taken
TUG's income
depends to a large extent on membership contributions
(See TUGboat 17(4)). Recently, we
have observed a decline in membership, and during the
same period the office staff has been reduced. At first we were
working with an Executive Director plus two clerical staff, and,
since the end of 1995, with just the ED. But even this expense
TUG can no longer afford, since the cost of renting office space,
telephone, computer equipment, and the payroll of one staff member is
too large compared to income. Considering the fact that printing costs
for TUGboat and, above all, postage (both domestic and overseas) have
increased by almost 30%, we just do not have enough money in the bank
to go on like this. We can no longer solely rely on donations by
individuals of other user groups to carry out our tasks. TUG must
have proper funds to allow it to buy computer hardware and pay for
Internet services. Therefore, as of January 1st 1997 the TUG Office
will be only staffed half time.
I would like to thank Ms. Monohon for her work during the five years
she has run the TUG office, and I wish her all the best for the future.
TUG appreciates it very much that she has agreed to act as contact
person for the upcoming TUG'97 Conference in San Francisco in the
Summer.
Since we must optimize our human resources, we must prioritize the
office duties by concentrating first on essential administrative
tasks. Questions directly related to
TUG (membership status, TUGboat subscriptions, etc.) should
preferably be sent via electronic mail to the address
tug@mail.tug.org. Only those without easy email access should try
to send a fax or phone.
Technical support questions should be addressed to the vendor or
developer of your TeX software (if commercial) or put to the newsgroup
comp.text.tex on Usenet.
TUG can act as a backup on behalf of users with commercial vendors
regarding software if there are problems of a general nature.
We have done well, but with your help we have to move on
TeX and TUG have come of age, and they are adults now. TeX
can live a life by itself, and nowadays every user should be able to
get TeX running without needing the help of a "TeX guru" to
install the system. Commercial and free plug-and-play TeX
installations are now available from several sources, and, as outlined
above, it is clear that TeX users no longer need to handle "nuts
and bolts" of the TeX engine but only need to worry about choosing
the color of the LaTeXe Cadillac amongst a palette as varied as a
rainbow. Today's TeX users should appreciate the work of countless
pioneers, who have each dedicated many person-months to make TeX
run on (almost) every computer hardware and operating system in the
world. We should also not forget all the TeX-gurus, who have
written from scratch the hundreds of LaTeX packages, which make
life so much easier for us today. Up to the late eighties TUG
played an important role in the distribution of TeX , acting as
"the" central and official TeX-related distribution point
(courses, books, distributions, official information, conferences,...).
Since then the Internet, regional TeX User Groups, and
the advent of efficient distribution media have taken over many of the
tasks which TUG used to provide. Therefore, as I explained above,
TUG must concentrate its efforts in a few essential areas, namely
serve as the official clearinghouse for TeX-related information (this
includes, of course, publishing TUGboat) and act as a liaison with
other TeX User Groups.
I am sure that with your continued support TUG will be able to play
a significant role in the future. We count on you!
A few words of thanks
I do not want to finish before thanking Karl Berry for his ongoing
work in maintaining the web2c sources, which form the basis
of (almost) every publicly available port of TeX -- the latest
version (7.0) should be out by the time you read this -- as well as
for donating his PC to run the TUG WWW server.
Another machine installed at UMB, the University where Karl is
working, is a Sun Sparc 10 workstation with a 4 Gbytes external hard
disk. This machine, which was the former DANTE CTAN node,
will soon be the official North American CTAN host (a welcome fact
after the demise of SHSU some time ago). Thanks once again to
DANTE for this generous donation to the TeX community. And,
of course, "un grand merci" to all my colleagues of the TUG Board
(present and past) and the TUGboat Production Team, who have been
working real hard to keep TUG and TUGboat going.
Last but not least, let us also have a thought for the ongoing work of
TeX developers worldwide: the LaTeX3, eTeX, and Omega teams,
of course, but also those who continue to adapt and optimize the use
of TeX for their national language or for their particular
application field. The future of TeX lies to a great extent in
their hands, and TUG wholeheartedly endorses all these initiatives,
which are the best guarantee that TeX is alive and well.
Revised "President's Words" of TUGboat 17(4)
Revision date 08 April 1997
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