<div dir="ltr"><div class="gmail_quote">Below is a message I've already sent to the members of UK TUG. You're also invited to the TeX / LaTeX Office Hour at 6:30 to 7:30pm tonight (UK time), and every Thursday until the end of March 2021.<br><br><div dir="ltr">Dear Fellow Member<div><br></div><div>This evening we'll increment the year counter. Like birthdays, an important symbolic event. A time to look back, and forward. The present crisis in UK TUG has its roots in mostly gradual changes over the last 25 years. This crisis is also an opportunity to renew the TeX community and its tools.</div><div><br></div><div>Every Thursday evening, from 6:30 to 7:30pm UK time, I'll host a TeX / LaTeX Office Hour. All TeX users are welcome, especially beginners. They'll continue at least until the end of March 2021.</div><div><br></div><div>Zoom details<br><a href="https://us04web.zoom.us/j/78551255396?pwd=cHdJN0pTTXRlRCtSd1lCTHpuWmNIUT09" target="_blank">https://us04web.zoom.us/j/78551255396?pwd=cHdJN0pTTXRlRCtSd1lCTHpuWmNIUT09</a><br>Meeting ID: 785 5125 5396<br>Passcode: knuth<br></div><div><br></div><div>My fear is not that UK TUG is dissolved, or that its money is wasted. My fear is that we miss and close off the opportunity to renew TeX. Succeed, and the future of TeX in STEM and elsewhere can be assured for the next 30 years. Fail, and TeX will become a niche product well removed from the mainstream of authoring and publishing. With dwindling use as legacy print-only publishing systems are replaced. Is this a binary choice, or is there a middle ground?</div><div><br></div><div>When it was created, TeX was something of a miracle. There was nothing like it. High quality, almost bug free, solving a difficult problem, and running on ordinary PCs (say 10 MHz, 2 MB and 40 MB). I still have confidence in TeX, and it's still central to math, physics and similar research.</div><div><br></div><div>Looking forward, TeX has problems. Many arose from after TeX was frozen (at version 3) in 1989. For example, creating accessible PDF via TeX isn't yet practical. PDF was introduced in 1993. Similarly, the first release of HTML was in 1993. Python was first released in 1991, Lua in 1993, Ruby and Javascript in 1995. Perl goes back to 1987.</div><div><br></div><div>These are not problems in TeX's fundamental typesetting algorithms. Rather, they are problems and opportunities in document transformation at the input side, and rendering of typeset material on the output side. At present our use of TeX depends on enormous amounts of software written in the TeX macro language. I fear that this is an emerging weak point and fault line.</div><div><br></div><div>Put simply, LaTeX is written in what is now an obscure and specialised language. As our community ages, we have to think about renewal. Here there's a fork in the road. Keep developing LaTeX forever, or freeze it as it is and develop a replacement in a more modern language such as Python or Ruby or Lua. Or even Haskell, as used by Pandoc.</div><div><br></div><div>We're still waiting for widespread easy and reliable conversion of LaTeX source documents into formats such as XML and HTML. And in web pages, MathJax has the same dominance for mathematical content that TeX had for print, since about 1990. Without a standard for LaTeX mathematics, this is a potential fault line.</div><div><br></div><div>Understanding the experience of users, particularly beginners, is a vital part to the renewal of the TeX community. Also vital is the experience and loyalty of existing TeX users and developers. Hence the zoom TeX / LaTeX Office Hour, every Thursday 6:30 to 7:30pm UK time, until the end of March 2021.</div><div><br></div><div>Here's that URL again:</div><div><a href="https://us04web.zoom.us/j/78551255396?pwd=cHdJN0pTTXRlRCtSd1lCTHpuWmNIUT09" target="_blank">https://us04web.zoom.us/j/78551255396?pwd=cHdJN0pTTXRlRCtSd1lCTHpuWmNIUT09</a><br></div><div><br></div><div>Happy TeXing and Happy New Year</div><div><br></div><div>Jonathan Fine</div><div><a href="https://jfine2358.github.io/" target="_blank">https://jfine2358.github.io/</a><br></div></div>
</div></div>