[texhax] Jan 2008 TUG news: renewals, conferences, software, journals, interviews

[tug-news at tug.org]

Dear TeX users,

The usual assortment of news and information ...

Conferences:

- TUG 2008 (http://tug.org/tug2008) will return to Cork, Ireland, again
  hosted by Peter Flynn, July 21-24, 2008.  The deadline for submission
  of abstracts is April 30, 2008; more details at
  http://www.ucc.ie/en/tug2008/call.

- Other upcoming meetings include:
  BachoTeX 2008 in Bachotek, Poland:
    April 30-May 4, 2008: http://www.gust.org.pl/BachoTeX/2008
    (web site and call for papers will be live soon).
  The second ConTeXt user meeting, in Bohinj, Slovenia,
    August 20-25, 2008: http://meeting.contextgarden.net/2008.

- Thanks to the generous sponsorship of the AMS, TUG had a very 
  successful exhibition booth at 2007 Joint Mathematics Meeting.  Thanks
  to those of you who stopped by!  One of the items we gave away at the
  JMM was a TeX calendar with images from the TeX Showcase
  (http://tug.org/texshowcase).  If you like, you can print the calendar
  for yourself; A4 and letter-size PDF's are at http://tug.org/calendar.

Software:

- On the software side, Christian Schenk has released MiKTeX 2.7
  (http://miktex.org); the main new feature is the inclusion of
  XeTeX.  Thomas Feuerstack has released the corresponding proTeXt
  (http://tug.org/protext), available from
  http://mirror.ctan.org/systems/windows/protext.

- The MacTeX distribution (http://tug.org/mactex) is still essentially
  that of TeX Live 2007, but the developers have released some updates
  so that it will work smoothly with Leopard.

- Work on TeX Live 2008 is progressing; the developers hope it will be
  released by this summer, in time for the TUG'08 conference.

Journals:

- The first issue of TUGboat for 2008 is the EuroBachoTeX 2007
  conference proceedings, a collaborative effort with DANTE, GUST, and
  other user groups.  It mailed a few days ago from Germany, to all 2007
  and 2008 members.
  
- We are collecting material for the second (regular) 2008 issue now,
  and welcome contributions of whatever sort (articles, notices,
  announcements, advertisements, ...); see http://tug.org/TUGboat.

- Issue 2007-4 of the PracTeX Journal has been published; it is
  available at http://tug.org/pracjourn.  The theme of this issue is
  Teaching LaTeX and TeX.

Interviews:
  
- The interview series continues, with Peter Gordon, Ross Moore, 
  and Susan DeMeritt & Cheryl Ponchin being the most recent
  interviewees: http://tug.org/interviews.
  
  We are considering publishing the interviews as an inexpensive (but
  nicely typeset) book, but before doing the work to produce it, we'd
  like to know if there is any interest.  If you might be interested in
  buying such a book, please drop a short note to interviews at tug.org,
  and thanks.
  

As always, we appreciate your support!

Happy TeXing,
Karl Berry (President) on behalf of the TUG Board
http://www.tug.org/