[tex-announce] Jul21 TUG news: TUG'21, ConTeXt 15, Geschke, OSI, TechSoup, CTAN

[TeX Users Group]

Dear TeXers,

July is a celebratory month here in the US and Canada.  I
congratulate those who observe these holidays.  It is a good time to
relax and enjoy the summer.

July 9 is the deadline for submitting papers to TUG2021
(August 5--8, https://tug.org/tug2021/).  This year our meeting is
online, but we hope to return to in-person meetings in 2022.
The deadline for submissions for the conference proceedings issue of
TUGboat is August 17, and for the fall regular issue is October 15.
Submissions are welcome and appreciated any time.

The 15th ConTeXt meeting in Bassenge, Belgium, is scheduled for September
20--25, and will be held in person (https://meeting.contextgarden.net/2021/).

A recent issue of ACM Communications has an obituary for Chuck Geschke
(September 11, 1939--April 16, 2021), a co-founder of Adobe and
co-creator of PostScript. It's available publicly at
https://doi.org/10.1145/3467481. Geschke was one of the early pioneers
of computer typography, highly influential for its development and
progress.

I mentioned previously that TUG became an Affiliate Member of Open
Source Initiative.  The recent newsletter of OSI announces this,
https://mailchi.mp/15b78315bcdc/summer-2021-newsletter-4928249.  Our
representative at OSI is Norbert Preining, a TUG Director (among many
other hats).

Speaking of the non-profit world, TechSoup (https://www.techsoup.org/)
generously offered COVID relief for non-profit organizations. I am happy
to report that we received a grant from them for a new office laptop,
which helped us to retire the old ThinkPad, that served the TUG office
well for years, but lately started to crash a little too often. We are
grateful for their help.

New CTAN packages in June:

- acrotex-js, JavaScript files used by acrotex and other packages;
- apalike-ejor, BibTeX style for the European Journal of Operational Research;
- arabic-book, an Arabic book class;
- bangla, a comprehensive Bangla language LaTeX package;
- biblatex-cv, create a CV from BibTeX files;
- bilingualpages, typeset two columns in parallel;
- book-of-common-prayer, support for the style of the Book of Common Prayer;
- docassembly, use the Acrobat JavaScript API;
- ffcode, fixed-font code blocks formatted nicely;
- href-ul, underscored LaTeX hyperlinks;
- kdpcover, covers for books published by Kindle Direct Publishing;
- minim, a modern plain format for the LuaTeX engine;
- minim-hatching, create tiling patterns with the minim-mp MetaPost processor;
- minim-math, extensive maths for LuaTeX;
- minim-mp, mplib integration with plain LuaTeX;
- minim-pdf, low-level PDF integration for LuaTeX;
- minim-xmp, embed XMP metadata in PDF with LuaTeX;
- nndraw, draw neural networks;
- optexcount, python script for counting words in OpTeX documents;
- spbmark, customize superscripts and subscripts;
- wichura-table, table macros for plain TeX (and LaTeX).

Happy TeXing!

Boris Veytsman
TUG President