[tex-announce] January 2013 TUG news: election, ctan, meetings, tugboat, comic

[TeX Users Group]

Dear TeX users,

Allow me to be the last to wish you a happy new year. 2013
dawns with new hopes and new challenges.

On the front line facing these challenges are the Board
of Directors, and several positions are up for election
this year. And it's also a presidential election year, 
if you love writing newsletters. The deadline for 
nominations is May 1. See all the details at
http://tug.org/election.


More news:
- www.ctan.org has been updated and relaunched. The new site 
   provides the information and functions of the old site in
   a new look & feel. This is a first step towards an improved 
   user experience. Some of the features of the new site are:

   * Informative landing page
   * Improved upload form with forwarding to the master hosts
   * Browsing of the CTAN tree
   * Listing, registering and monitoring of the CTAN mirrors
   * Browsing the Catalogue (packages, authors, topics)
   * Availability of different skins to suit your taste

   Most of the existing URLs are preserved. If you encounter 
   any problems report them to webmaster -at- ctan.org.

   Thanks to Gerd Neugebauer and all those involved.

- The host tug.ctan.org now resolves to the University of Utah; this is
   now the preferred mirror source for any CTAN site in North America,
   and users should feel free to browse there too.  Thanks to Nelson
   Beebe and his colleagues for making this addition to their
   longstanding CTAN mirror.

   For the exact urls, see the CTAN mirror listing at
   http://mirror.ctan.org/CTAN.sites

- The beginning of February will feature an introductory type 
   design workshop from Crafting Type at the MIT Media Lab, 
   Massachusetts, USA, Feb. 2-4, 2013. Registration is now
   open; for details, see http://tug.org/craftingtype

- Several major conferences are planned for this year. In 
   chronological order (links on the tug.org home page):
   * EuroBachoTeX 2013: Bachotek, Poland, May 1-5, 2013.
   * 7th ConTeXt Meeting and TeXperience 2013: Brejlov, 
     Czech Republic, Sept. 23-29, 2013.
   * TUG 2013: University of Tokyo, Komaba, Tokyo, Oct. 23-26, 2013. 

- TUGboat 32:3 is now public for all TeX users. Please consider 
   writing something for the next issue, which will be 34:1. Articles 
   on any aspect of TeX and friends are always welcomed. The deadline 
   for the next issue is March 1.
   http://tug.org/TUGboat/


- Donald E. Knuth, creator of TeX, was once again featured in the 
   web comic xkcd. (To see the relevant part, hover your mouse over
   the comic itself.)
   http://xkcd.com/1162/


As always, happy TeXing,

Steve Peter (President) on behalf of the TUG Board
http://www.tug.org/