[texhax] Nov17 TUG news: halloween, typography essays, tugboat, conferences

[TeX Users Group]

Dear \TeX{}ers,

Probably the most vivid \TeX-related experience for me this October
was visiting CTAN on Halloween.  I do not know what was more scary:
the scream in my dynamics or the font on my screen.  Certainly the
CTAN team deserves a lot of candy.

Among other interesting stories of the month was an essay on the
history of mathematical typography by Eddie Smith (thanks to Martin
Schr\"oder who found it):
  http://practicallyefficient.com/2017/10/13/from-boiling-lead-and-black-art.html
While the author is not a professional historian of type, the essay is
certainly worth reading.  If you are in a mood for some late
fall/early winter reading, here are a couple papers suggested by
Norbert Preining:
  http://chalkdustmagazine.com/blog/is-there-a-perfect-maths-font/
  http://www.vislab.ucl.ac.uk/pdf/MathBeauty.pdf

TUGboat 38:3 is going to hit mailboxes soon.  By tradition, the
issue from a year ago, 37:2, is now available for the general public.
This issue contains the proceedings of the Toronto conference, including
the fantastic lecture by Prof. Charles Bigelow on the history of
the Lucida math fonts
(https://tug.org/TUGboat/tb37-2/tb116bigelow-lucidamath.pdf). 

The co-creator of the Lucida fonts, Kris Holmes, could not make it to
Toronto, but I am happy to report that she has promised to visit PracTeX
in 2018 and even conduct a calligraphy workshop there - another reason
to attend the conference.  And, of course, there will be TUG18 in Rio!

Have a great November and hope to see many of you at our 2018
meetings! 

Boris Veytsman (TUG president)