Thanks to everyone who came to the Speaker Meeting and AGM yesterday at UCL. The day was divided into three distinct parts:
- Talks and discussion
- The AGM
- A workshop on LaTeX Support and Documentation
The Talks
The meeting began with a talk by Jonathan Fine reporting on the recent UK Mathematics Contents Workshop. Jonathan gave an overview of the wide range of people interested in the area, and how the meeting had been funded. He then opened the floor to discussion about issues that arose from the ideas presented. There was considerable interest in methods for presenting mathematical content on the web, and also in digitising older material. Topics mentioned included:
The second talk was given by Joseph Wright on xparse, a part of the ongoing work of the LaTeX Project. xparse is intended to be a more flexible replacement for \newcommand. Joseph’s slides are available here in PDF format. Discussion following Joseph’s talk centred on some aspects of the xparse implementation and also how a better method for defining LaTeX commands could help with documentation.
The final talk was given after lunch by Simon Dales, and focussed on his PANO method for using low-resolution images as place holders for higher resolution replacements in documents. Simon explained how the idea originally arose from methods used when network connections were slow and printers struggled with high resolution images. The ability to use external image sources, such as Flickr, to avoid PDF file “bloat” was discussed.
All three talk stimulated a lot of lively discussion, and the Committee thanks all of the speakers for presenting at the meeting.
AGM
Formal minutes of the AGM will be produced in due course. The main business transacted at the AGM was the election of a new Committee. Jonathan Fine continues as Chairman of UK-TUG for another year. The new Committee currently consists of:
- Jonathan Fine
- David Saunders
- Joseph Wright
- Charles Goldie
- Simon Dales
- Jonathan Webley
Motions were not passed at the AGM, and the Committee will be holding a Special Electronic General Meeting to transact ongoing business of UK-TUG. Members will be informed about this directly.
The final accounts for 2008–09 were presented by David Saunders: these are essentially unchanged from those circulated earlier.
Workshop on LaTeX documentation and support
The final part of the day was used as an opportunity to discuss documentation and supporting new LaTeX users. There was a spread of experience in those attending the meeting, and a number of useful ideas came up. The Committee hope to summarise these in a published form, to appear in Baskerville and other appropriate outlets. More details of this will follow when available.