[texhax] March 2016 TUG news: Conferences, TUGboat, TeX Live

[TeX Users Group]

Fellow TeX-ers,

Here in Vermont USA, spring is stirring.  The sun is just starting
to feel warm.  Most important, the liquid gold, maple syrup, is
flowing.  Next comes one of our extra seasons, mud season, and after
that spring will arrive.  Now is the right time to dream plans for
the summer.

1) The big news here is the announcement earlier this week that
registration is open for the 2016 Annual Meeting.  You can dream of
Toronto, Canada, from July 25-27, 2016; see
http://www.tug.org/tug2016/.

We expect presentations on a wide variety of topics --- new TeX
developments, publishing, practical use of LaTeX, plain TeX,
ConTeXt, MetaPost, and the rest of the TeX family, or any topic
related to the TeX world. The program list is growing so check the
latest on the web page http://www.tug.org/tug2016/program.html.

Please consider submitting a presentation of your own.  We are
interested in presentations at any level, including tutorials. To
submit, visit http://www.tug.org/tug2016/cfp.html.  The deadline for
abstracts is May 1.

This year we will have three special guests. The first is Chuck
Bigelow, of Bigelow and Holmes, a designer of the Lucida and
Wingdings font families.  The second is Kevin Larson of Microsoft
Advanced Reading Technologies, who has been influential in
improvements to rendering technologies.  The third is Robert
Bringhurst, known to TeXies for his reference *The Elements of
Typographic Style*.

One of the best things about a TUG conference is the informal fun
with other TeX folks.  This year we have arranged a record number of
excursions, including a Typography Excursion (at no additional
charge), a baseball game, Niagara-on-the-Lake and Niagara Falls,
Guelph, and Georgian Bay.  See
http://www.tug.org/tug2016/excursions.html.

We've reserved rooms for conference participants at the Bond Place
Hotel.  The conference page http://www.tug.org/tug2016/ has a link
to make online reservations.  The conference rate is guaranteed
until June 25, 2016.

Don't forget that the TUG Bursary Fund provides assistance for
members of the TeX community who would, for financial reasons,
otherwise be unable to attend.  If this applies to you, do not
hesitate to fill out an application at
https://tug.org/bursary/2016app.html.
 
2) The submission deadline for TUGboat 37:1 is just about today, but
the editors could accept new articles for another few days.
TUGboat is interested in articles over a wide array of subjects that
pertain to TeX and friends.  Especially welcome are tutorials and
introductions.  See https://tug.org/TUGboat/ for more.

3) The TeX Live team report steady progress on the 2016 release. A
tentative release schedule is on the home page
https://tug.org/texlive.  The goal is to have the public release
around the beginning of June.  Thank you to all contributors; more
contributors, including testers, are always welcome; see
https://tug.org/texlive/contribute.html.

4) The 24th yearly GUST BachoTeX conference in 2016 will be held
from April 29 to May 3 in the northeast of Poland.  It certainly
promises to be an intriguing conference (quoting from the call for
papers):

"We want to discuss matters and projects which somehow would realize
the coming-out of TeX from its sort-of a niche. Since about 5 years
a great many tools and publication solutions were made available
with open source licenses.  The up-to now standard of Corel, Word
and InDesign for creating publications is being dropped in favor of
solutions based on HTML, CSS, JS and SVG. A lively open source life
blossoms."

"That situation seems to be overlooked by the TeX community. We are
acting a little bit as if on the `other side' only Windows, Word and
propriety licenses and formats with which no inter-operation is
possible were prevailing. In reality the `other side' has evolved
such that there are many more possibilities for inter-operation than
whenever in the past."

For more, see their page http://www.gust.org.pl/bachotex/2016-en.

5) The 10th International ConTeXt Meeting conference is a bit
further out but still worth keeping an eye on, scheduled for
September 25-October 1, 2016.  It will be in Kalenberg, The
Netherlands, with this year's theme being "Piece of Cake".

6) In closing, a reminder: we continue our 2016
members-bring-members drive.  The TUG membership form at
https://tug.org/join.html contains the question for new members:
"Who invited you to join TUG?" If a new member lists you then you
will receive as a thank-you a postcard made by long-time TUG member
Peter Wilson on his letterpress (or any physical item from the TUG
store).  At the end of 2016, we will hold a drawing and the person
selected will receive a special prize: a limited edition of Manuale
Zapficum, 2009, a tribute to the great typeface designer.  For more
see https://tug.org/membership/.

Happy TeXing,
Jim Hefferon, for the TUG Board