[texhax] May 2003 TUG news: TUG 2003/04, TUGboat, TeX Live, development grants

[TUG board]

TUG news (see http://tug.org/join.html for information about joining
TUG, if you're interested):

0) we'd like to welcome Gerree Pecht to the TUG board of
directors, a long-time TeX user at Princeton University.  She
brings a wealth of typesetting experience and enthusiasm to the
board.  Although technically she was appointed, not having stood
for election, for convenience her personal statement is included
at http://tug.org/election/2003/candidates.html.


1) TUG 2003 CONFERENCE: The TeX Users Group 24th Annual Meeting
and Conference is scheduled for July 20-24, 2003 at the Outrigger
Waikoloa Beach Resort, Hawaii. See http://tug.org/tug2003 for
information and registration. If you plan to attend, please
register as soon as possible (if you haven't already).

Group travel discount rates may be available for flights via
major US gateways, if travel is booked with Protravel
International Inc., agent Gina Robles <grobles at protravelinc.com>.


2) TUG 2004 CONFERENCE: TUG 2004 will be held in Xanthi, Greece,
August 30-September 1, 2004 (just after the Olympics).  See
http://tug.org/tug2004 for information.  Please consider
submitting papers for TUG 2004 soon, as the organizers have the
ambitious plan of making the proceedings available at the
conference itself.


3) TUGboat Volume 23 Issue 1 (2002) was mailed around April 15,
2003.  If you were a TUG member in 2002 and haven't received your
copy, please et the office know (office at tug.org), so we can send
you a copy right away.  22(4), the last issue for the 2001
membership year, is still in process.  Back issues of TUGboat are
available from the TUG office.


4) TeX Live delivery - the 2003 edition of TeX Live is expected
to be available in early August.  This year, the CTAN archive
dump will be published simultaneously.  Due to space constraints,
the current plan is to produce the following three items:
a) demo CD: can run TeX directly from CD; Linux, MacOS X, Windows
   supported, with as many fonts, macros, etc. as will fit.
b) installable CD - complete tree of supporting files, but must be
   installed to disk.
c) TeX Live + CTAN *DVD* - installable TeX Live plus complete CTAN
   archive on one DVD.

YOUR RESPONSE REQUESTED: what is conspicuously absent from this
plan is CTAN on CD.  If this item is useful to you, please let us
know.  The response will determine whether we skip producing CTAN
on CD's entirely, or provide it on request only, or provide it to
everyone.


5) TeX Live help wanted - the documentation for TeX Live could
use a number of improvements and additions, especially regarding
basic installation and usage.  If you would like to volunteer for
this, please contact tex-live at tug.org.


6) TeX development fund - we've made the initial awards for the
first round of grants from the TeX development fund.  We were
very grateful, indeed happily overwhelmed, to receive donations
to the fund from around 100 individuals from all over the world!
We have acknowledged all donors on
http://tug.org/tc/devfund/donors.html.

We received seven grant applications from four individuals (in
four different countries), and were able to award four grants to
two individuals.  In all cases, TUG is funding only a portion of
these large projects.  Here is a brief summary:
  John Plaice - Using Omega to generate XML and MathML from TeX
  John Plaice - Combining the extensions of TeX into one system
  David Kastrup - Preliminary development of a LaTeX example code
                  repository
  David Kastrup - CTAN release of critical edition support for
                  LaTeX

For more details on these projects and the development fund in
general, please see http://tug.org/tc/devfund.


Finally, and as always, please don't hesitate to contact us for
any reason.

Respectfully submitted, the TUG board (board at tug.org)