[Tugindia] Contribution

[Radhakrishnan CV]

>>>>> "ARK" == A Ramakalyan, ICE RECT <RKALYN at rect.ernet.in> writes:

    ARK> I feel bad looking at the fate of noble groups such as TUG.
    ARK> I shall try my best to contribute to the cause.

Thank you very much for your kindness.

    ARK> In addition, I would suggest that we should approach
    ARK> publishing companies for sponsorship.  I just want to share
    ARK> my experience with you.  For the past 2 years I am writing a
    ARK> text book and I preferred using TeX for that.  

That is a laudable quality which all the other academics should
emulate. 

    ARK> However, my publisher does not know anything about it.  I
    ARK> went on to provide a two-three day training kind of thing to
    ARK> two persons from that company and encouraged them to be a
    ARK> part of TUG.  

They should have joined the list, because they would benefit with
instantaneous solutions for problems like the one you list below.

    ARK> They procured TeX Live 6 from you and have been using it ever
    ARK> since.  However, at the moment they are unable to transform
    ARK> all of their projects into TeX because there are several
    ARK> authors who prefer MS WORD kind of things.

That is not a big deal now. There are several word to TeX translators
among which I have found one written by a Professor of an Ukranian
University very good. It costs just $35, I would prefer to pay him the
money for the great job he has done. Further, all the subsequent
releases are free too.

    ARK> So, if we organize a meeting with all the publishers and
    ARK> encourage them to use Tex for all of its benefits vis-a-vis
    ARK> any other word processor, they would goad the authors to use
    ARK> TeX.  

Sure, we will discuss in the TUGIndia Board about the possibilities.
Suppose, if we organize something like this in Chennai or Bangalore,
will you spare one or two days for the workshop? All your travel and
boarding will be met by TUGIndia.

    ARK> After all, no author should find it difficult to type a .TEX
    ARK> file without a style file.

    ARK> I feel that there should be a swarm of workshops of the kind
    ARK> Dr.  Kalidoss organized recently.  

Yes. There is one being organized at Pune during mid June. Similar
plans are there for other parts of the country.

    ARK> These can be even a week long training camps.  And, the
    ARK> publishers should be willing to come forward to sponsor these
    ARK> events.  Please give a little bit of thinking on these lines.

Sure, we would thankfully take note of the above suggestions and will
try to implement as soon as possible.

Best regards.

Radhakrishnan