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

[TUG board]

Dear TUG member,

First, thanks to those of you who have renewed and welcome new members!
To those who haven't renewed yet, please remember that the "early bird
special" expires May 31, 2003 :).  See http://tug.org/join.html.

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 haven't received your copy, please let 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)