monk@boulder.Colorado.EDU (D. Monk) (08/31/90)
A recent message from D. Hosek might leave some people with the impression that the documentation for emtex is only in German. Most of the documentation is now in English as well as German. A point of etiquette: if one is unable to read a document (because it is in German, or something), the proper thing to do is to say nothing. We Americans are found offensive because of our attitude of skimming over some foreign language material and getting an impression (frequently wrong) and then advertising that impression to the world. I agree with the criticizm of Vulis concerning TUG. I think that the TUG editors should make a conscious effort to publicize public domain stuff; perhaps a regular column, or some inclusion of the British list of TeX listservers.
dhosek@sif.claremont.edu (Hosek, Donald A.) (08/31/90)
In article <25456@boulder.Colorado.EDU>, monk@boulder.Colorado.EDU (D. Monk) writes... > I agree with the criticizm of Vulis concerning TUG. I think >that the TUG editors should make a conscious effort to publicize >public domain stuff; perhaps a regular column, or some inclusion of >the British list of TeX listservers. Umm, I'd say that the "TeX Resources" column is a decent step in that direction. Do you read TUGboat? Do you even know what I'm talking about here? Consider also, that Barbara Beeton does TUGboat in her spare time. She does not get paid for the immense amounts of times she puts in on that journal. The last version of the TeX Resources column There's an awful lot of stuff out there. The ymir archive has 5280 files in 196 directories (ignoring the whole fonts tree). I'm missing an awful lot. Printing the directory listing from Aston in 8point type two-up gave me a stack of paper of around 50-some-odd pages. Jon Radel's collection of PD software for the PC fills some huge number of disks in PKZIP format. There are an awful lot of places to get these things. I could fill a screen with a list of FTP sites alone (and remember, not everyone has access to FTP, or electronic networks at all, for that matter). The DVI driver information I have fills a manilla folder with half an inch of paper. There's a significant amount of effort that goes into just keeping that up to date, let alone my poor attempts at answering driver queries. Let me say again, TUGboat is the journal of the users group, for the users group and BY the users group. Barbara Beeton is practically BEGGING people to write articles. (And as long as I'm droning on and on here, if you would like to write an article for TUGboat or have something for them, just send a note to tugboat@math.ams.com). Do you know what I'd like to see? I'd like to see someone take sbTeX, emTeX and DosTeX and compare them and tell me what each's strengths and weaknesses are. I'd like to see people like Wayne Sullivan, Eberhard Mattes and Gary Beihl write articles for TUGboat saying that they've written nice public domain pieces of software like the software they've written. I'll tell you what. If you have some concrete suggestions about TUGboat, send them to me, I'll collect them and forward them to the rest of the TUGboat editorial committee. -dh --- Don Hosek TeX, LaTeX, and Metafont support, consulting dhosek@ymir.claremont.edu installation and production work. dhosek@ymir.bitnet Free Estimates. uunet!jarthur!ymir Phone: 714-625-0147 finger dhosek@ymir.claremont.edu for more info
haccme@milton.u.washington.edu (Thomas Ridgeway) (09/01/90)
In article <25456@boulder.Colorado.EDU> monk@boulder.Colorado.EDU (D. Monk) writes: > > I agree with the criticizm of Vulis concerning TUG. I think >that the TUG editors should make a conscious effort to publicize >public domain stuff; perhaps a regular column, or some inclusion of >the British list of TeX listservers. So do I hear anybody volunteering to write this regular column? my two cents worth: a) I agree and DH agrees that he was mistaken. He is entitled to be mistaken once every 5000 contibutions to this forum. b) I am greatly appreciative to Don Hosek for his contributions to this list, which must be quite costly in terms of his time. c) I think free software is great stuff, and I get all of it I can. I don't think anyone is obliged to make it available to me, or spend their time cataloging free software for me so as to make it more convenient for me to gather it. I think it is very commendable for someone to do such a thing ( Jon Radel, for instance). d) :) have an errorfree day sorry, no sig today