tugboat - tex · 2017. 11. 6. · tugboat volume 36, number 2 / 2015 tug 2015 conference...

TUGBOAT

Volume 36, Number 2 / 2015

TUG 2015 Conference Proceedings

TUG 2015 74 Conference sponsors, participants, program, and photos

80 Volker RW Schaa / Typographer’s Banquet

82 Stefan Kottwitz / TUG 2015 conference report

General Delivery 89 Barbara Beeton / In memoriam

90 Barbara Beeton / Pierre MacKay, 1933–2015

92 Donald Knuth / Dedication to Hermann Zapf, 1918–2015

93 Hàn Thế Thành / Farewell Hermann Zapf

93 Kris Holmes / Remembering Hermann Zapf

95 Peter Karow / Digital typography with Hermann Zapf

100 Jacques André and Alan Marshall / Richard Southall: 1937–2015

103 Erik Frambach, Jerzy Ludwichowski and Philip Taylor / Memories of Kees:

C.G. van der Laan, 1943–2015

Resources 105 Joseph Wright / Development of the UK TEX FAQ

Fonts 106 Will Robertson / Single- and multi-letter identifiers in Unicode mathematics

Multilingual

Document Processing

109 Boris Veytsman and Leyla Akhmadeeva / Trilingual templates for an educational

institute in Bashkortostan, Russia

114 Joseph Wright / Joseph’s Adventures in Unicodeland

LATEX 117 Joseph Wright / Through the \parshape, and what Joseph found there

119 Boris Veytsman / TEX and controlled access to information

Publishing 123 Joachim Schrod / DocCenter—TEXing 11 million documents a year

128 Tom Hejda / Preparing LATEX classes for journal articles and university theses

130 Petr Oľsák / The CTUstyle template for student theses

Bibliographies 133 Boris Veytsman and Michael Cohen / New multibibliography package nmbib

Electronic Documents 136 C.V. Radhakrishnan, Hàn Thế Thành, Ross Moore and Peter Selinger /

Generating PDF/X- and PDF/A-compliant PDFs with pdfTEX— pdfx.sty

Software & Tools 143 Herbert Schulz / TEXShop’s key bindings vs. macros vs. command completion

145 S.K. Venkatesan / TEX as a three-stage rocket: Cookie-cutter page breaking

Macros 149 Enrico Gregorio / Recollections of a spurious space catcher

162 Hans Hagen / When to stop . . .

Abstracts 171 TUG 2015 abstracts (Bazargan, Cretel, Drümmer, Gessler, Hagen, Jackowski)

172 Die TEXnische Komödie: Contents of issues 2–3/2015

173 Eutypon: Contents of issue 32–33 (October 2014)

TUG Business 174 TUG 2015 election

174 TUG institutional members

Advertisements 175 TEX consulting and production services

News 176 Calendar

TEX Users Group

TUGboat (ISSN 0896-3207) is published by theTEX Users Group.

Memberships and Subscriptions

2015 dues for individual members are as follows:Regular members: $105.Special rate: $75.

The special rate is available to students, seniors, andcitizens of countries with modest economies, as de-tailed on our web site. Also, anyone joining or re-newing before March 31 receives a $20 discount.

Membership in the TEX Users Group is for thecalendar year, and includes all issues of TUGboat forthe year in which membership begins or is renewed,as well as software distributions and other benefits.Individual membership is open only to named indi-viduals, and carries with it such rights and responsi-bilities as voting in TUG elections. For membershipinformation, visit the TUG web site.

Also, (non-voting) TUGboat subscriptions areavailable to organizations and others wishing to re-ceive TUGboat in a name other than that of anindividual. The subscription rate for 2015 is $110.

Institutional Membership

Institutional membership is primarily a means ofshowing continuing interest in and support for bothTEX and the TEX Users Group. It also providesa discounted membership rate, site-wide electronicaccess, and other benefits. For further information,see http://tug.org/instmem.html or contact theTUG office.

Trademarks

Many trademarked names appear in the pages ofTUGboat. If there is any question about whethera name is or is not a trademark, prudence dictatesthat it should be treated as if it is. The following listof trademarks which commonly appear in TUGboatshould not be considered complete.

TEX is a trademark of American Mathematical Society.METAFONT is a trademark of Addison-Wesley Inc.PostScript is a trademark of Adobe Systems, Inc.

[printing date: September 2015]

Printed in U.S.A.

Board of Directors

Donald Knuth, Grand Wizard of TEX-arcana†

Kaveh Bazargan, President∗

Jim Hefferon∗, Vice PresidentKarl Berry∗, TreasurerSusan DeMeritt∗, SecretaryPavneet AroraBarbara BeetonKaja ChristiansenMichael DoobSteve GrathwohlKlaus HöppnerSteve PeterCheryl PonchinNorbert PreiningArthur ReutenauerBoris VeytsmanDavid WaldenRaymond Goucher, Founding Executive Director †

Hermann Zapf (1918–2015), Wizard of Fonts†

∗member of executive committee†honorary

See http://tug.org/board.html for a roster of all pastand present board members, and other official positions.

Addresses

TEX Users GroupP.O. Box 2311Portland, OR 97208-2311U.S.A.

Telephone

+1 503 223-9994

Fax

+1 815 301-3568

Web

http://tug.org/

http://tug.org/TUGboat/

Electronic Mail

(Internet)

General correspondence,membership, subscriptions:[email protected]

Submissions to TUGboat,letters to the Editor:[email protected]

Technical support forTEX users:[email protected]

Contact theBoard of Directors:[email protected]

Copyright c© 2015 TEX Users Group.

Copyright to individual articles within this publication

remains with their authors, so the articles may not

be reproduced, distributed or translated without the

authors’ permission.

For the editorial and other material not ascribed to a

particular author, permission is granted to make and

distribute verbatim copies without royalty, in any medium,

provided the copyright notice and this permission notice

are preserved.

Permission is also granted to make, copy and distribute

translations of such editorial material into another

language, except that the TEX Users Group must approve

translations of this permission notice itself. Lacking such

approval, the original English permission notice must

be included.

2015 Conference Proceedings

TEX Users Group

Thirty-sixth Annual Meeting

Darmstadt, Germany

July 20–22, 2015

COMMUNICATIONS OF THE TEX USERS GROUP

TUGBOAT EDITOR BARBARA BEETON

PROCEEDINGS EDITOR KARL BERRY

VOLUME 36, NUMBER 2 • 2015

PORTLAND • OREGON • U.S.A.

74 TUGboat, Volume 36 (2015), No. 2

July 20–22, 2015 Welcome Hotel

Sponsors

TEX Users Group DANTE e.V. River Valley Technologies—UKwith special assistance from individual contributors. Thanks to all!

Conference committee

Karl Berry Klaus Höppner Robin Laakso Volker RW Schaa Joachim Schrod

Bursary committee

Taco Hoekwater, chair Jana Chlebikova Kaja Christiansen Bogusław Jackowski Alan Wetmore

Participants

Leyla Akhmadeyeva, Bashkir State Medical Univ.Pavneet Arora, Bolton, ONKaveh Bazargan, River Valley Technologies, UKStefan Bedacht, TU DarmstadtBarbara Beeton, AMS

Nelson Beebe, University of UtahDenis Bitouzé, Université du Littoral Côte d’OpaleJohannes Braams, Zoetermeer, NetherlandsGyöngyi Bujdosó, University of DebrecenDavid Carlisle, LATEX3 ProjectJennifer Claudio, Synopsys Outreach FoundationJulien Cretel, University College CorkRajagopal CV, River Valley Technologies, IndiaChristine Detig, Net & Publication Cons. GmbHMichael Doob, University of ManitobaOlaf Drümmer, callas software GmbHGraeme Duffin, Huddersfield, UKDominik Fischer, TU DarmstadtUlrike Fischer, Mönchengladbach, GermanyYukitoshi Fujimura, Ichikawa-shi, JapanDeimantas Galčius, VTEXRoland Geiger, Leipzig, GermanyPaul Gessler, Milwaukee, WISteve Grathwohl, Duke University PressGary Gray, State College, PAEnrico Gregorio, Università de VeronaHans Hagen, Pragma ADETom Hejda, Czech Technical University in PragueKlaus Höppner, TUG and DANTE e.VBogusław Jackowski, Gdańsk, PolandTimm Knape, Wehrheim, GermanyHarald König, Balingen, GermanyJonathan Komar, ITH icoserveStefan Kottwitz, Lufthansa Industry SolutionsReinhard Kotucha, Hannover, GermanySiep Kroonenberg, Groningen, Netherlands

Sebastian Krüger, Berlin, GermanyYusuke Kuroki, Yokohama, JapanDag Langmyhr, University of OsloBruno Le Floch, LATEX3 ProjectManfred Lotz, DANTE e.V.Jerzy Ludwichowski, Toruń, PolandHenri Menke, Leinfelden-Echterdingen, GermanyLothar Meyer-Lerbs, Bremen, GermanyFrank Mittelbach, LATEX3 ProjectRoss Moore, Macquarie UniversityGerd Neugebauer, Groß-Gerau, GermanyHeiko Oberdiek, Sasbach, Germany

Petr Oľsaḱ, Czech Technical University in PragueSteve Peter, TUG

Susanne Raab, ECAP, Uni ErlangenArthur Reutenauer, Royal Opera House, LondonWill Robertson, University of AdelaidePetra Rübe-Pugliese, CTAN

Volker RW Schaa, Darmstadt, GermanyJoachim Schrod, Net & Publication Cons. GmbHMartin Schröder, Duisburg, GermanyTorsten Schuetze, Talheim, GermanyHerbert Schulz, Naperville, ILPeter Selinger, Dalhousie UniversityKeiichiro Shikano, Tokyo, JapanMartin Sievers, DANTE e.V.Matthew Skala, Copenhagen, DenmarkLinas Stonys, VTEXPiotr Strzelczyk, Gdańsk, PolandS.K. Venkatesan, TNQ SoftwareBoris Veytsman, George Mason UniversityUlrik Vieth, Stuttgart, GermanyHerbert Voß, DANTE e.V.Alan Wetmore, US Army Research LaboratoryJoseph Wright, Northampton, UK

TUG2015—Darmstadt, Germany

TUG2015—program and information

Sunday, July 19, 3 pm: walking tour of Mathildenhoehe and Rosengarten, duration about 2 hr,with our Klaus Höppner as guide.

Sunday, July 19, 7 pm: informal opening gathering, LaLucha, Schleiermacher Str. 10-12 (self-pay basis).

Monday, July 20: post-session TeXShop workshop, Herb Schulz.

Monday

July 20

8:00 am registration

8:50 am Steve Peter, TUG Opening

9:00 am Ross Moore Semantic enrichment of mathematics using ‘active comments’

9:35 am Olaf Drümmer PDF/UA—what it is, how users can benefit from it, and howto get it right

10:10 am Ross Moore and Peter Selinger Using pdfx.sty for producing validating PDF documents

10:45 am break

11:00 am Joseph Wright X

E

TEX and LuaTEX: Getting Unicode data into theright places

11:35 am Will Robertson Reconciling unicode-math with LATEX2ε mathematics

12:10 pm Bogus law Jackowski, Piotr Strzelczyk,and Piotr Pianowski

All the characters we need

12:45 pm lunch

2:00 pm Bogus law Jackowski, Piotr Strzelczyk,and Piotr Pianowski

Six GUST e-foundry math fonts and what next?

2:35 pm Frank Mittelbach Twenty one is only half the truth

3:10 pm Hans Hagen What if . . .

3:45 pm break

4:00 pm Joseph Wright State of the (UK-)TEX FAQ

4:35 pm CTAN team State of CTAN

4:45 pm Barbara Beeton, Volker RW Schaa,Joachim Schrod

In memoriam: Pierre MacKay, Richard Southall,Hermann Zapf, Thomas Koch

Tuesday

July 21

8:55 am announcements

9:00 pm Pavneet Arora Fluss: A flow leak monitoring system

9:35 am Tom Hejda Preparing LATEX classes/templates for journal articles and

university theses

10:10 am Boris Veytsman and Michael Cohen A new multibibliography package: nmbib

10:45 am break

11:00 am Boris Veytsman and Leyla Akhmadeeva Trilingual templates for an educational institute in

Bashkortostan, Russia

11:35 am Paul Gessler Pretty-printing Git commit history graphs with PGF/TikZ

12:10 am q&a, TUG meeting

≈ 12:30 pm lunch

2:30 pm Messel Pit excursion

Wednesday

July 22

8:55 am announcements

9:00 am Kaveh Bazargan and Jagath AR TEX—After 35 years, still the best solution

for modern publishing

9:35 am Joachim Schrod DocCenter: TEXing 11 million documents a year

10:10 am S.K. Venkatesan A proposal to construct pagination as a three-step

cookie-cutter process

10:45 am break

11:00 am Joseph Wright Through the \parshape, and what Joseph found there

11:35 am Julien Cretel Functional data structures in TEX

12:10 pm Hans Hagen When to stop . . .

12:45 pm lunch

1:45 pm group photo

2:00 pm Boris Veytsman TEX and controlled access to information

2:35 pm Enrico Gregorio Recollections of a spurious space catcher

3:10 pm q&a

7:00 pm banquet at Cafe Rodenstein, in the museum building.


Torsten Schuetze, Siep Kroonenberg, Herb Schulz,and Keiichiro Shikano

Jonathan Komar, Ross Moore, and Olaf Drümmer

Deimantas Galčius, Jagath AR, Enrico Gregorio,and Linas Stonys

SK Venkatesan, Jagath AR, Herb Schulz,and Keiichiro Shikano

TEX Lions: Jerzy Ludwichowski (GUST),Hans Hagen (NTG), and Volker Schaa (DANTE)

Heiko Oberdiek, Nelson Beebe, and Graeme Duffin

Dominik Fischer, Paul Gessler, and Tom Hejda

TUGboat, Volume 36 (2015), No. 2 77

Excursion to Messel Pit

A well at Messel Pit with 108 year-old water; smells abit like sulfur but tastes good

Stefan Kottwitz, Deimantas Galčius, and Linas Stonys

City tour with Klaus Darmstadt at night

TUG Board: Pavneet Arora, Michael Doob, Barbara Beeton, Arthur Reutenauer, Klaus Höppner, Boris Veytsman,and Steve Grathwohl


CTAN maintainers: Manfred Lotz, Joachim Schrod, Gerd Neugebauer, and Petra Rübe-Pugliese

LATEX developers: Frank Mittelbach, Johannes Braams, David Carlisle, Will Robertson, Joseph Wright,and Bruno Le Floch

Joachim Schrod presents drawings by Duane Bibby toKlaus Höppner for the excellent conference organization and . . .

to Ulrike Fischer for her tremendous effortssupporting TEX users

TUGboat,

Volu

me36

(2015),No.

279

At the banquet

Front row : Keiichiro Shikano, Volker Schaa, Yusuke Kuroki, Ulrike Fischer, Lothar Meyer-Lerbs, Alan Wetmore, Leila Akhmadeeva, Boris Veytsman,Steve Peter, Jennifer Claudio, Gyöngyi Bujdosó, Tomasz Luczak, Enrico Gregorio, Will Robertson, Jagath AR, Reinhard Kotucha

2nd row : Pavneet Arora, Frank Mittelbach, Jonathan Komar, Dominik Fischer, Steve Grathwohl, Susanne Raab, Matthew Skala, Harald König,Roland Geiger, Ulrik Vieth, Ross Moore, Barbara Beeton, Johannes Braams, Petr Oľsák, Gerd Neugebauer, Christine Detig, Manfred Lotz,Joachim Schrod, Nelson Beebe, Michael Doob, Denis Bitouzé, Siep Kroonenberg, Kaveh Bazargan, Deimantas Galčius

3rd row : Jerzy Ludwichowski, Hans Hagen, Sebastian Krüger, Stefan Bedacht, Dag Langmyhr, Timm Knape, Bogus law Jackowski, Piotr Strzelczyk,Gary Gray, Klaus Höppner, Herbert Schulz, Heiko Oberdiek, Tom Hejda, Joseph Wright, Paul Gessler, Henri Menke, Rajagopal CV,SK Venkatesan, Herbert Voß, Stefan Kottwitz, Petra Rübe-Pugliese, Bruno Le Floch, Arthur Reutenauer, Torsten Schuetze, Graeme Duffin

4th row : David Carlisle, Martin Schröder, Yukitoshi Fujimura, Julien Cretel, Linas Stonys

Photos

courtesy

ofAlan

Wetm

ore,Pav

neet

Arora

,andRein

hard

Kotu

cha

Menu

Essen, wie gedruckt!

Food, in Typographer’s Terms

3erlei Vorspeisenteller3 kinds of appetizers

ZWIEBELFISCH• Pulposalat mit Orange und roten Zwiebeln• Salad of pulpo (octopus) with orange and red onions

EIERKUCHEN• Muskatcrêpe mit Zitronenfrischkäsecreme,

Staudensellerie, Tomate• Nutmeg crêpe with lemon cream cheese, celery, and tomato

SPECK &SCHUSTERJUNGE

• Längliches Brötchen mit Pancetta und Gemüsesalat• Sandwich with pancetta and vegetable salad

Hauptspeise nach TYPOGRAPHISCHEM MASSMain dish according to TYPOGRAPHIC MEASURE

KONKORDANZ 5x5

• Lasagne mit Sugo vom Rind und Schwein mit gegrilltem Gemüseoder

• Gemüselasagne mit Mozzarella und Tomaten (vegetarisch)

• Lasagne with beef and pork sugo and grilled vegetablesor

• Vegetable lasagne with mozzarella and tomatoes (vegetarian)

NachspeisenDesserts

MAGER, HALBFETT• Käseplatte• Cheese platter

EXTRAFETT• Panna Cotta mit roten Beeren• Panna cotta with red berries

Zwiebelősch • Zwiebelősche sind Buchstaben einer bestimmtenSchrift, die aus Unachtsamkeit in einem anderenSchriftkasten abgelegt wurden.Im Satz erscheinender Buchstabe anderen Schrift-charakters.

Printer’s Pie • Letters sorted into the wrong box of a type case(diferent typeface, size, etc.).A letter set in a wild typeface on a typeset page.

Eierkuchen • Bezeichnung für einen auseinandergefallenen Satz:ein kleines Missgeschick ś ein mit viel Mühe gesetzterSchriftsatz, der in sich zusammenfällt und in seineBestandteile auŕöst. Der Eierkuchen ist fertig.

(fall into) Pie • A small mishap and a page typeset with a lot of efortcollapses into its constituents and dissolves.The pie is ready.

TUG2015 — Darmstadt, Germany

Menu

Speck • Bezeichnung der Setzer für die leeren Räume in derSatzform, so z. B. die leeren Rückseiten des Titelblat-tes, des Widmungsblattes u. ä., die ofenen Seiten inKapitelanfängen usw. Diese Räume wurden demSetzer wie eine normale Satzarbeit bezahlt.

? • Typesetter’s term for the empty spaces on pages,empty backside of title or dedication pages, the openpage in chapter beginnings, etc. These spaces havebeen paid like a normal typeset page.

Schusterjunge • Ein Schusterjunge ist die erste Zeile eines Absatzes,wenn sie allein am Ende einer Spalte oder einerfertigen umbrochenen Buchseite steht.

Orphan • A paragraph-opening line that appears by itself atthe bottom of a page or column.

Fleisch • Fleisch nennt man den leeren Raum, der den Buch-staben umgibt. Der das Buchstabenbild umgebendeTeil der Oberŕäche einer Drucktype, der tiefer liegtals das Buchstabenbild (siehe 1 im linken Bild).

shoulder/neck • conŕicting deőnitions

Konkordanz • Typographisches Maß48 Didot ⇒ 4 Cicero ⇒ 1 Konkordanz5 Konkordanz ⇒∼90 mm

4-em quad • Typographic measure48 Didot ⇒ 4 Cicero ⇒ 4 em quad5 Konkordanz ⇒∼3.5 in

MagerHalbfettExtrafett

• Abbildung (Schnitt) des jeweiligen Schriftschnitteseiner bestimmten Schrift

LightSemiboldExtra Bold

• Font weights

TUG2015 — Darmstadt, Germany


TUG 2015 conference report

Stefan Kottwitz

TUG 2015—the day before

The TUG 2015 conference took place in Darmstadt,Germany, from 20th to 22nd of July. This was the36th annual meeting of the international TEX UsersGroup. DANTE e.V. (http://www.dante.de) spon-sored the conference fee for its members with 50 Eurofor each attendee. I’m sure this great sponsorshiphelped many TEX friends to come.

By way of introduction, I work for Lufthansa In-dustry Solutions (lufthansa-industry-solutions.com), developing and implementing networks forcruise ships. I planned to visit the conference pri-vately. When I told my project team that I willleave for three days, they asked me why. Confer-ence? TEX? What is this? I explained what TEX isand how I used it in my work. I use TEX as macrolanguage for creating thousands of lines of switchconfigurations. And I create graphics visualizing thephysical and logical structure of networks using TEXcoding, specifically TikZ—what other people pointand click with Visio. That convinced my boss to con-sider the TEX meeting as training, so the companycovered my travel costs. He expects that our workin designing and documenting will benefit, and thisis true.

I arrived on Sunday right before the conference.There was an informal gathering at 7 pm in a restau-rant, so I walked there. The restaurant was prettyfull of TEX friends, seems like almost everybody wasalready there. That was a great occasion to meetpeople again, some I have not seen since 2011, whenI attended the TUG meeting in Kerala, India. Onesuch was Kaveh Bazargan, who has been elected tobe the next TUG president. His plans are very inter-esting, as he is interested in boosting online presence,attracting new users, and attracting publishers toget things funded. Of course I met many DANTEmembers, whom I saw last in Stralsund earlier thisyear at the DANTE meeting. I also had interestingdiscussions, such as about tex4ht, with two menfrom VTEX (http://www.vtex.lt), a LATEX-basedpublishing company based in Vilnius, Lithuania. Imet Reinhard Kotucha again, who is a regular atTEX and DANTE meetings for a long time. Whenyou arrive in a restaurant and don’t know most ofthe people yet, it’s good to see a familiar face. Asusual, Reinhard takes photos of the conference andthe surrounding world.

Editor’s note: Originally posted at latex-community.org

by the author; edited for TUGboat, with permission.

Finally, only a group of DANTE people remained.About 11 pm it was time to return to the hotel.

TUG 2015—day 1

About 9 am, the current TUG president, Steve Peter,opened the conference with some introductory words.

The topics for today:

• PDF: enriching it and making it accessible• Unicode: getting it into TEX• Past, present and future of TEX, LATEX and fonts• News and announcements

Let’s take a look at the presentations.Ross Moore gave the first talk. He spoke about

semantic enrichment of mathematics. At first, hedemonstrated the already available possibilities toadd PDF tooltips to text and math. Tooltips meantext boxes popping up when you move over it withthe mouse or cursor. While they won’t be printed,they add value to electronic documents. The readeris able to access further information, which is oth-erwise hidden to stay focused. Constructing mathexpressions with embedded semantics requires a dif-ficult syntax though.

Ross introduced a new package called mathsem.It offers a way to provide the semantic meaningseparate from a math formula. Here’s an example:

$

%$semantics

% x $ variable

% f $ function

% \Re $ real part of

%$endsemantics

y = f(x)

$

The characters in the formula now get their owntooltip. As you can see, you can define semanticsfor macros. This is in fact recommended: define amacro with a name explaining the meaning, ratherthan how it’s typeset, and add semantic informationto the macro. The syntax is:% token $ semantics end-of-line

It’s implemented by hacking the catcodes ofthe comment symbol % and end-of line, and thenhooking in. This way has the benefit that evenwithout the package, everything just works, since theadditions are hidden in comments and look like codeannotations, thus still useful in themselves.

To ease the work, mathsem provides a command\DeclareMathSemantics for repeated use, settingup default tooltips for symbols and macros. Thetooltips can be also be used for a screen reader,meaning for vocalization by assistive tools. Ross

Stefan Kottwitz


showed several examples, and discussed the applica-tion to have spoken words for math, in the contextof PDF/UA documents.

Following this, Olaf Drümmer explained whatPDF/UA means, in the following talk. UA stands foruniversal accessibility, which basically means thata document provides reasonable access to the PDFcontent. So, a visually impaired person could use ascreen reader to get vocal information. It requiresthat all content (including images) be available astext. Other demands are reliable, defined order;embedded semantics; a logical structure; metadata;and not using encryption. PDF/UA is related totagged PDF: a well tagged PDF can conform toPDF/UA. Olaf demonstrated screen reader software,a PDF/UA checker, and a visualizer tool.

Another talk by Ross Moore together with PeterSelinger gave us an update to new developments ofthe pdfx package, which helps in producing docu-ments conforming to PDF/A standards. There arevarious PDF/A-x standards, and the new version ofpdfx supports most of them. Furthermore, the newversion adds support for LuaTEX.

Now we got a coffee break—a few minutes tofetch a coffee and to drink it, talking a bit; I wish itcould be longer as I value such conversations duringconferences.

Joseph Wright gave the first talk after the break.While the first session was about PDF, we now cometo the topic of Unicode. He spoke about getting Uni-code input into TEX and the challenges involved. Forexample, he explained the difficulties in uppercasing,lowercasing, titlecasing and casefolding. Details cangive a developer headaches, I feel. There are a lot ofdifferences to consider in various languages.

Then it was Will Robertson’s turn. At thestage, he changed roles, grabbing his camera andsaid: ”Everybody wave!” and took a picture of theaudience. Then, he started with a retrospectiveabout his development of the unicode-math package.

unicode-math allows us to switch math fonts aseasily as switching text fonts. There are thousands ofmath glyphs in various fonts, each one with a LATEXname, but you can also simply use it as an inputsymbol. This can be done by code-auto-completionof the LATEX command to that symbol. This mayincrease readability, but not in all cases, such aswhen we have glyphs that are too similar. Thus,unicode-math gives direct access to a huge collectionof symbols. A font with proper Unicode support isrequired, of course. Luckily, there are some.

LATEX authors commonly use fonts to conveya meaning. In Unicode mathematics, you keep thesame font but choose a symbol with the desired mean-

ing. There are a lot of spacing challenges because itis done differently in math compared to text.

Next, the GUST team discussed how charactersfor math fonts are chosen. That led into a talk aboutwhether we really need new fonts, or if there’s notenough demand. We heard about the TEX Gyre mathfonts, described with their underlying scheme, andwith variants of bold, italic, sans-serif, double-strokeand more. Requirements were discussed such asscaling factors for subscripts and superscripts, mathkerning, glyph links, growing glyph chains. Thereare over 4200 glyphs in DejaVu Math alone.

But few companies produce OpenType mathfonts. So, perhaps there’s no commercial pressure formath fonts, or not enough demand. So, a future taskis possibly not making just another font, but fontvariants, such as sans-serif variants for presentations,or bold/heavy variants for headings.

Frank Mittelbach then talked about history andcurrent development of LATEX2ε. Now, it’s 21 yearsold. The policy of compatibility will now changeto a policy of roll back–roll forward. Fixes andenhancements will be applied directly to the kernel.You can call the latexrelease package with a dateas option, and it will change to be compatible to theversion of that date. Also packages can adjust theircode to releases via an \IncludeInRelease macro.There will be also patch releases which will not beroll-back points, in contrast to major releases.

All the fixes of fixltx2e are now in the kernel.ε-TEX support is now included out-of-the-box, alongwith fundamental support for X ETEX and LuaTEX,a regression suite for testing with all formats. ε-TEX and X ETEX passed the tests, while still thereare many failures in running against LuaTEX, to beexamined. Some improvements as well:

• \emph can now produce small caps or others• \textsubscript is defined• \DeclareMathSizes only takes points• fewer fragile commands

The final speaker for the third session was HansHagen. His talk “What if . . . ” was more reflective.He looked at Unicode, which is a nice way to getrid of input encodings and font encodings, with easytransition thanks to existing UTF-8 support. Andthere are sophisticated casing, categories, and spac-ing. What if we had had it earlier? A lot of time was“wasted” struggling with encodings. However, Uni-code may introduce challenges due to possibilities,cultural issues of symbols, and persistent compati-bility errors. And, there are exceptions due to userdemands.

He reflected on TEX’s design, which is nice but



may be boring sometimes. The look and feel may notfit some purpose such as schoolbooks. Generally, nicefonts help reading, but of course there are differentopinions on design.

Hans explained that we still have insufficient butpersistent standards. The market demands XML, inand out, and support of tagged PDF and EPUB.Then, he took a look at the development of speedand memory and how we can benefit today, suchas saving time struggling with hardware constraints.What if we had this 20 years ago? What would beour position today? We compete with WYSIWYGand real-time rendering, so we should explore to-day’s hardware benefits with more effort—thoughconstraints can lead to better solutions.

He finished with a look at perspectives. WillTEX become a niche or go mainstream? Will it be abackend? Or more used by individuals? Requirementfor quality doesn’t grow; other apps can do well too.Can we focus on control, and on cultural aspects?The future is not clear.

A short break followed, with some ice cream inthe hotel cafe. Joseph Wright then gave an updateon the status of the UK TEX FAQ. The originalCambridge server is not available any more. So,the FAQ has moved to another server, maintainedby me. The original and established domain name(tex.ac.uk) has been preserved. Now, while I like tohelp in continuing, improving accessibility and webdesign, the UK TUG team will continue maintainingit. Joseph Wright asked for people to help improvethe FAQ content. This work load can be shared, soanybody could focus on a specific part. The FAQsources are on github for further development.

Joachim Schrod then described to us the servicesprovided by CTAN. An essential part is providingLATEX and other packages to chosen servers, which inturn sync them to about 200 mirrors. That’s for usTEX users, who can then update our packages. Thisis a principal task of all the CTAN-related servers,noticeable by the many terabytes moving. Otherservices, such as manually browsing package directo-ries, are less used, as this is done more by developersthan end users. Archiving and mirroring involveschallenges such as observing mirror server status andchecking if they are up to date.

The heart of CTAN is the TEX catalogue. Main-tenance of packages’ metadata is a laborious butfundamental part of the archive. Besides incom-ing mirroring, there are services such as the webserver, including upload management, and mailinglists. With a look at the load on the CTAN servers,Joachim Schrod confirmed Hans Hagen’s words thatTEX may be a niche—but it’s a large one.

Finally, Barbara Beeton and Volker RW Schaagave words in memoriam of Pierre MacKay, RichardSouthall and Hermann Zapf, who have passed away.

In the evening, there was a dinner in the Drei-klang restaurant. The complete LATEX3 team, HenriMenke and I decided to go to the Ratskeller. Wetalked about current LATEX3 development until lateinto the night.

TUG 2015—day 2

Pavneet Arora started the first session with a talkabout FLUSS, a flow leak monitoring system. I wascurious, how this should be related to TEX. Theworking title, FLUSS, is an acronym. It stands for”Flow leaks unearthed ss” where ss means 2x sigma.The latter refers to double sigma testing.

His talk had little to do with typesetting. But ithas to do with TEX. Pavneet considers TEX to be apart of the core stack of embedded systems. He usesTEX as a sophisticated documentation backend, andfor reporting, so in this case not for publishing. Soto say, he used the “TEX of Things” to detect waterleaks. Why is this important? As with fire, waterdamage can be limited by catching the problem earlyon; you don’t have fire detectors at home, but smokedetectors, to get warned at an early stage. He focusedon the water supply instead of all possible breaks andleaks along the whole supply way. His applicationsuite is monitoring the flow at the source side, e.g.,near the water meter. It learns water consumptionpatterns over time, and results in ConTEXt-generatedreports. They allow the triggering of alarms thanksto pattern recognition. The hardware is an embeddedsystem based on a Raspberry Pi. There’s a bunch oftools to install—TEX was the easiest part, a greatsign of its maturity and its reliable packaging. Wesaw ConTEXt-generated diagrams and how to detecta water leak there. This topic is highly importantto insurance companies, connected to much money.Thus, Pavneet showed an interesting and unexpecteduse of TEX in that industry.

In the next talk, Tom Hejda spoke about prepar-ing LATEX document classes and templates for theCzech Technical University in Prague (CTU). Hespoke about differences in creating classes for journalarticles compared to university theses. There, heconsidered the user’s point of view, stated some ba-sic facts and gave examples. He started with typicalusage. The procedures are different:

• Journal article: author typesets, it’s reviewed,there’s a final author version, it’s copyeditedand typeset.

• Thesis: student typesets, supervisor comments,the final version is submitted by the student.

Stefan Kottwitz


A journal has its style, decides which packagescan be used, etc.; the journal has full control ofoutput. In contrast, with a thesis, the university hasstyle restrictions, but the students mostly decide howto actually typeset the thesis. Journal articles andtheses also differ in sectioning depths, used packages,and in the variety of topics, which is comparativelynarrow in most journals.

Tom compared these examples and discusseddifferences in their approach:

• actapoly, a class for journal articles in the ActaPolytechnica, written in a mixture of TEX andLATEX2ε.

• ctuthesis, written using LATEX3 as much aspossible, with a rich key=value interface.

Boris Veytsman followed, presenting a new multi-bibliography package. There’s actually a packagewith this name. He reworked it, and his new packageis called nmbib.

Generally, a bibliography is not merely a tech-nical list. It describes the state of the field. So,not only an alphabetical listing, but also a chrono-logical list shows the development and progress inthe field. With nmbib, you can have ordering byname, by appearance, and chronological, all in thesame document. Each cite command produces en-tries for all lists. With the old multibibliographypackage, there were some limitations, such as sup-port for just fixed BibTEX styles. Perl was required.With the new nmbib, you still get a look and feelsimilar to multibibliography: you get three listswith hyperref links. But now nmbib has compati-bility with (and in fact loads) the natbib packageand supports its commands. Any natbib style maybe used for alphabetical or sequential bibliographylists. You don’t need Perl any more. Instead of us-ing a Perl script, BibTEX is simply run three timesfor three orderings. nmbib is much more flexiblecompared to multibibliography, since all natbibcustomizations can be used, and citation styles canbe customized. The new and more flexible nmbibpackage has also been developed with ebook usagein mind.

Leila Akhmadeeva joined Boris for a presenta-tion about trilingual templates for an educationalinstitute in Bashkortostan, Russia. This is a specialchallenge because Bashkir Cyrillic is different fromRussian Cyrillic. A formal document is already achallenge for a style designer, and a consistent multi-lingual style is even more so. TEX is a good tool forsuch tasks. They chose Paratype for consistent fonts.

Paul Gessler followed with a talk about printingGit commit history graphs. Git is a popular version

control system. Based on the gitinfo2 package,Paul wrote an experimental package called gittree,which generates such graphs for use in LATEX, on thebasis of TikZ, and provides a convenient interface.He showed use and creative abuse, such as with agithub project MetroGit where each commit is ametro station, and a branch is a metro line, a mergeis a connection between lines; together, it produces amap of the metro stations of Paris. Paul’s code willbe on github by the end of summer, and he expectsto put it on CTAN in early 2016.

Steve Peter then did his final task as a president:introducing the new president, Kaveh Bazargan.

Kaveh said that it’s an honor to hopefully con-tribute in this new way to our great community. Hehas worked with TEX since 1983, and his first TUGmeeting was 1986 in Strasbourg. He said that TEXdeserves to get far more visibility. So, he hopes wekeep old friends but get more youngsters to joinin. We can show there are many things TEX can dowhich can still hardly be done using other technology,although applications have essentially caught up inmany respects. He thanked everyone for voting in theelection, and announced that he will talk afterwardswith the people who voted differently . . . with a smile.The new TUG board then gathered before the audi-ence. (The following report on the annual meetingincludes contributions from Boris Veytsman.)

A first suggestion, quickly approved, was thefounding of an accessibility working group. KlausHöppner said we could join forces with institutesworking on tools for blind people. Many people areworking on things such as tagged PDF; teams shouldbe brought together.

It was said and agreed that we should demon-strate more vigorously how TEX is used in academicwork and industry. But where to show it? At TUGmeetings, we are talking among ourselves. The TUGweb site is visited mostly by TEX users too, probablynot by not-yet-users. There is a TEX showcase there.

My silent thought was that I could adapt and ex-pand the TEXample gallery, a tagged and categorizedgallery built by Kjell Magne Fauske. It’s currentlyfocused on TikZ, but could be extended to TEX ingeneral. There are sophisticated back-end scripts forautomated workflows including compiling, addingto file shares and database, tagging, and generatingoutput in PNG and JPG via Ghostscript for galleryview and thumbnail preview.

Frank Mittelbach said that we should supportthe entry level at universities. Some opinions wentfurther: we should promote very early use of TEX,such as in schools. The potential TEX entry pointtoday is often when people start writing their thesis.



But by that time, they have already used Word andsuch for 10 years. TEX comes late here. Few peoplefeel the need to switch from Word after using it forsix or ten years.

Supporting this thesis, Rajagopal CV told abouthis experience in teaching in India, at the B.Sc. andM.Sc. levels at the University of Kerala. (We hope adetailed article will be forthcoming.)

Regarding publishers and TEX: few publishersuse TEX—they were in the room, notably RiverValley Technologies and VTEX. Many publishersdeny TEX because there’s still an old bad reputation.More and more other applications catch up. 95percent of files coming from authors are in Word,so the industry has developed clever things aroundWord, expensive tools to work with Word, such astaking out references for processing. The industrystandard is conversion from Word, period. TEX is inthe minority. Though, it’s a big industry to tackle,if you know how.

We should promote the information that theTEX distribution is actively maintained, and willcontinue to be. That’s an important criterion. Howmany people go to conferences in other fields, to tellabout TEX? Not so many. Of course, other usergroups are also mostly among themselves.

Boris Veytsman started a discussion in anotherdirection. Whatever we all think, where is TEXgoing to be in the future? And how about TUG? Inpast times, there was much meaning and reason forbeing a user group. Without today’s Internet, wepromoted and helped users. But today? We mayhave made ourselves unneeded, because we did agood job. There’s CTAN, a user doesn’t need to bea TUG member any more to get all the software,online help in forums, and most of the membershipbenefits. What reason is left to join? Thanking andsponsoring, what else? Many members join becauseof sympathy. We should find a justification for theTEX Users Group to exist, as such, find a convincingreason for people to join. This was an open discussionwith many people contributing. Why do we needour group? How can we tell anybody that we arerelevant? Should and could we find a new identity?Why is a user group necessary?

Brought up by Matthew Skala: TEX is not thefirst choice even in the open source world. A userbuys a new computer with Ubuntu and just clicks on“Create a new document” icon. Ten times out of tenthe system will open an OpenOffice or LibreOfficeclone of Word: is this inevitable?

Still, even though millions of users rely on TEX,things can easily break. As wonderful as they are,teams are small. The CTAN maintainers’ group

consists of four people, the LATEX team consists of fivepeople, and so on. If a key person gets ill, everythingstops. Rarely do new people pick up. It’s not onlyabout users or money—an important issue is gettingusers to contribute and to turn into developers. Weare seriously low in developers: we need users to turninto being developers. So, user groups are essentialto activate people who start contributing.

That was a serious discussion, and it’s goodto bring up such points; to raise questions to findanswers. Nevertheless, to be sure, people here arepositive and in a great mood.

Away from the TEX front, in the afternoon,there was an excursion to the Messel Pit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messel_pit), a UNESCOWorld Heritage site because of its abundance of fos-sils. In the evening we met at the Herrengarten andtalked until late.

TUG 2015—day 3—first part

The third day was opened by Kaveh Bazargan andJagath AR. They talked about today’s requirementsof publishers who demand XML. Kaveh showed is-sues with XML. He gave examples of proper XMLencoding but crazy meaning, such as embeddingeach letter within XML text or writing a plus-minussign by a plus symbol with an underline tag. Hereviewed the classic publishing chain, from authorto publisher to peer reviewer to copy editor and fi-nally to the typesetter with possible loops. Then heshowed the cloud approach, which is not so linearbut more star-like: when publishing in the cloud, theXML file is in the middle while the involved partiesall work directly with that file. He showed an on-line editor on the River Valley Technoogies platformwhich allows editing, reviewing and correcting witha rich online editor. There, the file is always savedin XML and rendered into HTML or PDF on the fly.Authors are editing XML, but TEX is used in thebackground. Specifically, TEX is used for paginationof XML documents and producing high-quality andeven enriched PDF output with different styles fromthe same XML base code. Jagath AR showed someexamples of enriched PDF, such as PDFs with severallayers for screen color mode, black and white, andCMYK coloring, all in the same PDF file.

Joachim Schrod then gave an experience reportabout TEX in a commercial setting. The purposeis producing all written communication for an on-line bank. This means usually small documents,but counted in the millions, with severe legal re-quirements. Such document types are letters withstandardized or individual content, PIN/TAN letters,account statements, credit card statements, share

Stefan Kottwitz


notes, and so on. Some may contain forms, somecontain PDF attachments of third parties. The clientactually types LATEX, but within templates: onlysimple LATEX is used by the client, no math, andthere are only three special characters: backslashand braces. You can imagine that common TEXsymbols can have a very different meaning in thiscontext: think of $ and % in a bank. The client usesa web application basing on a reduced tinyMCE edi-tor. Usage has to be simple, with low latency, and itneeds to be restricted for production. There are justa few special environments, tailored to the corporateidentity style to ease use. The output is generatedto different channels, such as to a PDF file (withletterhead), printed letters (without letterhead, asit’s already pre-printed on the paper), and it needsto be archived.

Besides manually written letters, there are jobsfor automated mass production, such as producing ac-count statements each month. The standard process-ing steps are: generate, format, output, and archive.The engine is plugin-based, using document parame-ters and templates. Different representations needto be produced, such as draft, online with letterhead,on paper without, as mentioned above. Calibrationto in-house printers may be needed, and additionallyinserted empty pages when sending to a printshop.Folding machine control has to be implemented, dif-ferent archiving needs to be supported. Everythinghas to be done after formatting, since there is a legalrequirement to be able to reproduce the archived filein any style on any output channel even after manyyears. So you need a storage strategy.

In this environment, they use the classic DVI for-mat with \special commands. There are differentDVI drivers for each purpose. DVI is better suitedsince the documents are much smaller documentsthan PDF files, and storage costs money. The inter-active preview has to be fast, small jobs have to beprocessed quickly in high amounts. So they use aTEX .fmt file with preprocessed macros. There isnot even a document class selection, it’s preloaded,no standard packages are used as they are preloadedwith the format as well. The packages are very short,with essentially no code, just selection. Compilinga document goes down from 1.5 s to 0.06 s per doc-ument, for example, which is a factor of about 25.This is a big thing in mass production. A samplerequirement is to generate and format 400,000 docu-ments in a determined time.

To make production even more efficient, tabularmaterial is typeset using \vbox and \hbox insteadof LATEX tabular environments. So, TEX is very fastin this regard. Jobs can be parallelized. Codes are

actually piped into a TEX process. Instead of run-ning TEX on each small file, large container files aregenerated with, say, 50,000 documents for a singleTEX run. The DVI file then gets split in the postpro-cessing. Every file, all graphics used, and all fontsused get a timestamp for storing and reproducing.

The whole process has to be robust and reliable,fast, and it should use low resources such as memoryand storage. The whole setting shows that traditionalTEX is still useful today, even outside of academiaand publishing.

The next talk by S.K. Venkatesan presented TEXas a 3-stage rocket. The stages are:

• breaking paragraphs into lines;• making a single long scroll page;• cutting the scroll into pages with a cookie-cutteralgorithm.

With infinitely long pages, footnotes are placed afterthe text paragraph.

He compared creating paragraphs with CSS inHTML for browsers and as generated by TEX, andspoke about coexistence of TEX and HTML.

After a break, Joseph Wright followed with atalk about the \parshape primitive command, witha live demo instead of slides. The LATEX3 team devel-oped a new interface to \parshape based on threedifferent concepts: margins, measure, and cutouts.He demonstrated setting margins to absolute values,and to values relative to the previous paragraph. Heshowed indenting lines differently within a paragraph,shaping paragraphs and producing cutouts with thenew interface. An open challenge is that it’s stillline-based, but not based on heights of objects, orlengths.

Julien Cretel gave the next talk. It was aboutfunctional data structures in TEX. At first, he ex-plained what Haskell is: a purely functional language.He gave an example of quicksort, and said he wantedto do algorithmic things within TEX. One coulddelegate this to an external program, but we oftenlike to use TEX even if it may not be theoreticallythe best choice. Many of us like to solve things inTEX, instead of calling Matlab or such. At least it’sa pleasant intellectual pursuit. Thus, Julien wantsto implement semantics like this in TEX:

data Tree a = Empty | Node (Tree a) a (Tree a)

He asked the audience for feedback. For exam-ple, if TEX should be chosen for the implementation,or it should be done with LATEX3. He plans to focuson a subset, wants to write algorithms in Haskell andthen translate to TEX or LATEX code.

So it was more an open discussion than a presen-tation. Maybe we can see an implementation next



year. Some comments from the audience.

• It’s easier to implement Haskell in TEX than toimplement TEX in Haskell.

• Why implement it in TEX, if you have Haskellalready? As above, for the challenge.

• Arthur Reutenauer suggested working with theTEX tries used for implementing hyphenation.

• TEX is Turing complete . . . we know, but thisdoesn’t help in the how.

• And LuaTEX? Lua is imperative, not functional.

TUG 2015—day 3—second part

Hans Hagen gave the next presentation. The mainpoints were

• How far can you go with TEX?• Do you really want to go that far?

Hans showed fascinating examples, such as TEX-rendered text fed into MetaPost for postprocessingand then re-rendered by TEX for justification.

Another example was about “profiling” lines.For instance, there are two columns, and everythinghas to be on the grid. TEX has paragraphs, but nota concept of a line. It’s pasting hboxes together,with heights and depths. TEX doesn’t natively havecolumns, but you can implement them. He showed anexample of boxed columns, all on the grid, includingsuch things as inline fractions. By checking theactual content, lines could stay closer in the gridwhen heights and depths of elements did not collide.He implemented a profiling mechanism. In the end,he did not use it . . . except for this talk.

A second item: many of us know the TEX com-mand \ignorespaces. ConTEXt now has commands\removeunwantedspaces, \removepunctuation andothers. Content can be marked as punctuation, ortagged in any way. So, you can remove such markedcontent, after typesetting.

Finally he demonstrated some peculiarities of anASCIIMATH implementation, in which, for example,writing o twice becomes an infinity sign, with allchallenges.

Boris Veytsman continued with a talk aboutcontrolling access to information with TEX. Thisis not only about security, but also simply hidingunneeded information. E.g., technical people maynot need to see financial information, and conversely.So a document may contain both, but shows just therelevant part to each kind of reader. Output-levelaccess control may be sufficient.

Meanwhile, regarding security, documents maycontain an open part and a part with classified in-formation. In this case, input-level access controlis needed. Existing input control in LATEX is via

\includeonly combined with \include. There aredisadvantages or restrictions; for example, every suchpart starts a new page. With a lot of parts or in-volved reader classes it can quickly get complicated.Separate files may be confusing. A classic approachwould be:

\newif\ifclassified

\ifclassified\input{classified.tex}\fi

Another solution is provided by the commentpackage, which provides environments for informa-tion with different audiences.

For output-level control, Boris has written themultiaudience package. The beamer class offers asimilar concept—presentation and a handout mode,so also visibility control. But multiaudience hasbeen developed for supporting any number of suchmodes, a.k.a. visibility classes. This is not for se-curity, but for hiding boring or non-relevant parts.(He later learned about the tagging package, whichprovides similar functionality.)

Regarding security, there must be source levelcontrol. Boris showed the new tool srcredact, whichis a Perl script with an input syntax inspired bydocstrip. There are two modes, one to extract textfor a partial version and the other to incorporatechanges from a partial version. So there’s two-waycommunication.

Finally, Enrico Gregorio showed examples ofgood and bad TEX code. He talked about the spuri-ous space syndrome, which has bitten all TEX pro-grammers at some time. Or even worse, the “missingrequired space” syndrome. Missing protection ofline endings is classic. TEX friends had fun visuallyparsing code looking for spaces.

He talked about LATEX3 and showed variousexpl3 examples. He strongly recommended expl3:even if it adds a thousand lines to load, it’s worthit— later it will be part of a format anyway. It doeshave some disadvantages, e.g., code is much moreverbose, and still requires understanding expansion.He thanked the LATEX3 team for their great work onexpl3. I only can join the thanks.

At the end, we had a question and answer ses-sion. One of the most important questions: whereand when will be the next TUG meeting? It will be inToronto, from July 25–27, with optional excursionsbefore and after.

Again, thanks to TUG and the sponsors DANTEe.V. and River Valley Technologies. And especiallyto Klaus Höppner, who did a great job as organizer!

⋄ Stefan Kottwitzstefan (at) texblog dot nethttp://www.latex-community.org

Stefan Kottwitz


In memoriam

Barbara Beeton

Over the past year, the TEX community has lostseveral individuals without whose contributions ourlandscape would be very different.

The first of these is one of TUG’s past presi-dents, Pierre MacKay. An early adopter of TEX,Pierre’s first goal was to create an environment forcreation of documents in the Arabic script. As presi-dent, Pierre instituted regular reports to membersin TUGboat [1], a practice continued by succeedingpresidents to this day.

Two type designers whose work played a signifi-cant part in making TEX the quality tool it is todaypassed away this spring: Hermann Zapf and RichardSouthall.

Hermann Zapf, who has been called the fontifexmaximus of the world of typographic and calligraphicletters, needs no introduction to anyone in the leastfamiliar with type design. His direct contributionto TEX consisted in designing the Euler family offonts and, as a present for Don Knuth’s 70th birth-day, “reshaping” those fonts to take advantage ofimprovements in font technology. He is rightly listedamong the TUG “notables” as “Wizard of Fonts”.Less directly, his hz system of paragraph justificationmade its mark, through its TEX-based implementa-tion by Hàn Thế Thành, whose Ph.D. dissertationlaunched pdfTEX. Finally, owing to collaboration onthe font tuneup, he was named an honorary mem-ber of DANTE, the TEX group for German speakers.His kind cooperation with me in preparation of theEnglish version of his DANTE presentation on thatoccasion [2] taught me much, about both the nicetiesof typography and his generous spirit; sadly, I neverhad the opportunity to meet him. He will be greatlymissed.

Richard Southall was less well known, but hetoo made his mark on TEX. The sans serif fonts ofthe Computer Modern family owe much to his touch.Richard attended the 1984 TUG meeting, presentinga session on “First principles of typographic designfor document production” [3], explaining the meritsof a more austere approach to typography than isnow (or was even then) the norm. Richard’s typo-graphic specialty was fonts for use in directories andother situations where recognition and absence ofambiguity are paramount.

Another individual important to the TEX com-munity passed away in the summer of 2014: ThomasKoch, past president of DANTE, the users group forGerman speakers, from 1999–2001. (A memoriam

for Thomas will be included in the next issue ofTUGboat.)

Brief comments were shared at the meeting inmemory of these four individuals, by Volker Schaa(Hermann Zapf), Joachim Schrod (Thomas Koch),and Barbara Beeton (Pierre MacKay and RichardSouthall).

While I was writing this introduction, I learnedof another passing: Kees van der Laan, one of thefounders and first chair of NTG (the Dutch TEXgroup), succumbed to a long illness on August 24.Kees contributed freely to TUGboat [4], and thepublications of other TEX groups on a wide range oftopics, and was a frequent and welcome participantat BachoTEX gatherings.

Some remembrances in honor of these departedcolleagues follow this introduction.

References

[1] Pierre MacKay, “From the President”, aseries of reports in TUGboat, linked fromhttp://tug.org/TUGboat/Contents/

listauthor.html#MacKay,Pierre

[2] Hermann Zapf, “ My collaboration withDon Knuth and my font design work”,TUGboat 22:1-2, pages 26–30. http://tug.org/TUGboat/tb22-1-2/tb70zapf.pdf

[3] Richard Southall, “First principles oftypographic design for document production”,TUGboat 5:2, pages 79-90. http://tug.org/TUGboat/tb05-1/tb10south.pdf

Corrigenda: TUGboat 6:1, page 6. http://tug.org/TUGboat/tb06-1/tb11gendel.pdf

[4] Kees van der Laan, contributions toTUGboat, linked from http://tug.org/TUGboat/Contents/listauthor.html#Laan,

Keesvander

Photo courtesy of Diana Wright


Pierre MacKay, 1933–2015

Barbara Beeton

Pierre was an early adopter of TEX, and a veryearly member of TUG; his name first appears in amembership list in June 1981. In November 1982,he and Rick Furuta at the University of Washingtonassumed the duties of Unix site coordinators, a taskthat Pierre continued to perform until 1992.

An enthusiastic supporter of TUG, Pierre waselected president and served in that capacity during1983–1985. He remained on the board until 1991,and was always a source of good advice and goodcheer.

Pierre’s primary interest was in the study ofclassical Greek and Arabic literature. His early stud-ies were largely based in Greek, but needing a secondclassical language, he began his study of Arabic.Later, he taught himself Ottoman Turkish. Someof his first publications concerned medieval Arabicliterature. In 1966, he accepted a job at the Univer-sity of Washington, because their classics programincluded a Near East Studies program that allowedhim to pursue all his main research interests whileteaching the same subjects.

By the end of the 1960s, he became interestedin the potential use of computers and computer lan-guages for non-Western scripts, and was an earlyadopter of computerized text processing and typeset-ting. Working with a colleague in Ottoman studieswho was an amateur Arabic-script calligrapher, he de-veloped the first digital typesetting font in Arabic. In1980, in addition to his positions in the departmentsof Classics, Near Eastern Languages and Literature,and Comparative Literature, he became an adjunctmember of the Department of Computer Science. (Abusy man!)

When TEX and Metafont arrived on the scene,Pierre climbed onto the bandwagon, and immediatelystarted to work on adaptations for Arabic script. Ina brief 1983 TUGboat announcement [1], he notedthat “[for] this we must extend and modify the basicprogram, but we are making every effort to ensurethat our Arabic Script version of TEX will be anenhancement, and will leave all the basic features ofTEX82 intact.” Pierre made good on his intention.In 1987, he and Don Knuth together wrote an ar-ticle for TUGboat announcing “Mixing right-to-lefttexts with left-to-right texts” [2]. Lacking actualR-to-L fonts, the effect was simulated using mirroredlatin Computer Modern with examples inspired by“Through the Looking Glass” (see the excerpt be-low). The standard conventions for interleaving andline-breaking were properly observed.

Also in 1987, the annual TUG conference washeld in Seattle at the University of Washington, withPierre as the local host. The topic that year wasTEX for the Humanities, a subject dear to him.

With Pierre’s urging, the university obtainedvarious TEX-capable output devices, including anAlphatype CRS, the same machine used to producethe final camera copy of Don Knuth’s Computers& Typesetting series. Since one of these machineswas also in use at AMS, Pierre was a ready soundingboard when the hardware proved recalcitrant.

Another project that he assisted, although morewith moral support than active participation, wasthe creation of the “Washington cyrillic” font, wncy,through his “matchmaking” between a staff memberat the UW Humanities and Arts Computing Centerand the AMS, rebuilding and extending, for inclu-sion in the amsfonts collection, a proto-cyrillic fontbased on Computer Modern originally created at theAMS [3].

After his retirement from the University of Wash-ington in 1990, Pierre separated himself from the“formal” TEX community in order to devote his en-ergies to the scholarship he felt still needed doing.He could still be detected from time to time ontexhax, sharing his copious knowledge with otherswho needed help. On June 14, 2015, while workingon the New York Times crossword puzzle, Pierrepassed away so quietly that the pencil remained inhis hand.


Excerpt from “Mixing right-to-left texts with left-to-right texts” [2], p.17.

I treasured Pierre’s friendship, and miss himgreatly.

Photos and information on Pierre’s non-TUGlife have been supplied by Diana Gilliland Wright,who shared the last years of his life. We are greatlyindebted to her for her kindness, and thank herwarmly.

References

[1] Pierre MacKay, “TEX for Arabic Script”,TUGboat 4:2, page 72.

[2] Donald E. Knuth and Pierre MacKay,“Mixing right-to-left texts with left-to-right texts”,TUGboat 8:1, pages 14–25.

[3] Barbara Beeton, “Mathematical symbols andcyrillic fonts ready for distribution”,TUGboat 6:3, pages 126–128.

Some links to web pages telling Pierre’s story:

A brief TUG interview:http://tug.org/interviews/mackay-p.html

A memorial by Diana Wright:http://surprisedbytime.blogspot.ca/2015/06/

pierre-antony-mackay.html

A remembrance by an archaeologist familiarwith Pierre’s interest in Venetian and Ottoman Greece:https://mediterraneanworld.wordpress.com/

2015/06/15/pierre-mackay/

An account by Pierre concerning his identifi-cation of a manuscript that proved to be the miss-ing original of a renowned work by an 18th centuryOttoman author:http://surprisedbytime.blogspot.com/2011/06/

evliyas-manuscript.html


Dedication to Hermann Zapf, 1918–2015

Donald Knuth

The METAFONTbook is dedicated

To Hermann Zapf:Whose strokes are the best

and this has an (intentional) double meaning: Notonly does it say that he drew the most beautifulshapes. It secretly implies that he also gave the mostvaluable feedback! Because, in English, we get a“stroke” from another person when that person paysus a compliment. Hermann had very strict standards,and he never praised anything that he didn’t reallylike. Therefore I could always count on hearing histrue opinions, good or bad; this was indispensableduring my years as an apprentice learning abouttype. I couldn’t trust strokes from other colleagues,but Hermann was the best teacher because he didn’thold back criticism.

He and I collaborated closely on three projectsduring the 1980s: Computer Modern, Euler, and thebook 3 : 16 Bible Texts Illuminated.

Subsequently we corresponded rather often, andvisited each other’s homes several times. I couldcount on receiving both a Christmas card and abirthday card from him in most years! In his mostrecent letter (January 2015) he did say that his healthwas not so good.

The photos at right were taken when Hermannand Gudrun visited my house on 10 September 2001.

References

[1] Hans Hagen, Taco Hoekwater, and VolkerR. W. Schaa. Reshaping Euler: A collaborationwith Hermann Zapf. TUGboat, 29(2):283–287,2008. http://tug.org/TUGboat/tb29-2/tb92hagen-euler.pdf.

[2] Donald E. Knuth. The METAFONTbook,volume C of Computers and Typesetting.Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, USA, 1986.

[3] Donald E. Knuth. Computer Modern Typefaces,volume E of Computers and Typesetting.Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, USA, 1986.

[4] Donald E. Knuth. 3:16 Bible Texts Illuminated.A-R Editions, Inc., 801 Deming Way, Madison,WI 53717-1903, USA, 1991.

⋄ Donald Knuth

Stanford, California

Editor’s note: Requested by the editors of Eutypon(eutypon.gr), and to appear in their next issue. Kindlyallowed to be “pre”-printed here by the editors and author.

Hermann Zapf, Donald Knuth, and Gudrun Zapf von Hesse.

HZ and DEK at work on Don’s computer.

Photos by Susie Taylor of the San Francisco Public Library.


Farewell Hermann Zapf

Hàn Thé̂ Thành

I met Zapf for the first time at a TEX conference.

That time I was too shy to come close and make any

conversation. I was impressed how a kind and bright

gentleman he was, despite his fame and age. Before

that, I only knew the name Hermann Zapf from his

typefaces which I used and admired.

Then, through the work on HZ extensions for

pdfTEX I learned more about Hermann Zapf and

also had the opportunities to contact him. During

testing of the HZ extensions I sent the sample output

to him, asking for his opinion. Zapf answered with a

letter in his unique style, with beautiful typography,

very kind and contented words. I was encouraged

by his letter very much; before that I was having

doubts if my work makes any sense. Later the faculty

asked Zapf whether he would be willing to review

my thesis.1 Zapf accepted. I could only be thankful.

During another TEX conference in Darmstadt I

met Hermann Zapf again, and was lucky enough to

have a dinner with him, together with Hans Hagen

and Volker Schaa. I forgot that I was having dinner

with a legendary person. I was simply enjoying

the time being there, for Hermann Zapf was such a

pleasant person to be with. It was like being with a

wise and kind uncle.

When I read the news that Hermann Zapf passed

away, I had an empty feeling. I said to myself, it’s

an unavoidable ending of a great story. Then slowly

after that I realized what a loss it was, and how sad

I am.

Farewell Hermann Zapf, we will miss you until

we meet again.

1 Hàn Thé̂ Thành, “Micro-typographic extensions to the

TEX typesetting system”, dissertation, Faculty of Informatics,

Masaryk University Brno. TUGboat 21:4, 2000.

http://tug.org/TUGboat/tb21-4/tb69thanh.pdf

Remembering Hermann Zapf

Kris Holmes ∗

Hermann Zapf is admired as the greatest type de-signer of his era. Vast reams have been written abouthis work and many more will be written. Now he isgone and I am sad.

I first met Hermann Zapf in 1979, when I stud-ied calligraphy and type design with him in summercourses at RIT. Our acquaintance continued and

∗ Reprinted by permission from

http://bigelowandholmes.typepad.com/bigelow-holmes/

2015/06/remembering-hermann-zapf.html.

became friendship over the next 36 years. In remem-bering him now, I want to tell the one story thatmeans the most to me.

The German firm of Dr. Ing. Rudolf Hell, notedfor their ultra-high-quality digital scanning, color,and image engraving systems, also invented the firstdigital typesetting machine, the Digiset. Dr. Hellmade several generations of high-quality Digiset ma-chines for the European market from the 1960s tothe 1990s.

In 1981 the firm wanted to introduce a new,small Digiset typesetter into the US with originaltypefaces to showcase its high resolution and quality.My studio partner, Chuck Bigelow, had been retainedas their American consultant. Their European headtype adviser, Max Caflisch, who had worked withand learned from Jan Tschichold, was impressed bymy brush-written Roman caps, which I had learnedfrom Ed Catich and Bob Palladino. I was askedto submit proposals for new typeface designs to bereviewed by Dr. Hell’s type review board for possibledevelopment and inclusion in Dr. Hell’s type library.The review board included Hermann Zapf, who hadalready designed several original faces for the firm,including Marconi, Edison, and Aurelia, among thevery first original typefaces for digital typography.

And so it was that in the fall of 1981 we flewto Basel, Switzerland, for the selection of new typedesigns. On the morning of the type review board, Inervously entered the room where Hermann Zapf andthe other European designers sat. I handed out thetype specimens I had laboriously drawn, photocopied,assembled, and prepared by hand. One of those pro-posals was for a new connecting script design thatfeatured a unique inner hairline and flowing swasheslike sarabands in the capitals. I provisionally namedit ‘Isadora’ after the pathbreaking American moderndancer, Isadora Duncan whose graceful vision I ad-mired. Isadora the typeface was a new, original, anddaring design. I was afraid it might be too daring.

Each of the European designers scrutinized mysamples in silence. One of them, not Hermann, hadpreviously and privately expressed to me his doubtsthat a “girl” could design an original typeface, andindeed that morning I noticed a sour look on thedoubter’s face as he pondered my much labored-overIsadora. Yet, before the doubter could say a word,Hermann Zapf spoke instead, saying: “Yes, this ishighest quality, without question. We will take it.”Hermann put down my sample and nodded to meapprovingly. The other designers looked at Hermann,looked at me, then looked at Hermann again andnodded their heads in obedient agreement. Isadorawas accepted unanimously.


And so it was with the approving words of thegreat and persuasive Hermann Zapf, followed bythose obedient nods from the others, including thedoubter, that my life as an original typeface designerbegan in earnest. Dr. Hell eventually merged withLinotype, and the typeface Isadora was acquired byITC. It is still a popular typeface today, more than30 years later. Hermann was right.

A few weeks after that fateful meeting, a pack-age arrived in the mail for me. It was a copy ofFeder Und Stichel (‘Pen and Graver’), Zapf’s superbcalligraphy engraved by August Rosenberger andprinted at the Stempel type foundry. Hermann Zapfhad inscribed it to me. That rare book is still mymost prized possession. It was his generous way ofhonoring my beginning as an original designer. Hecertainly knew from the beautiful type designs ofhis wonderful, talented wife, Gudrun, that a girlcould design original typefaces. I have the fondestmemories of Hermann Zapf over all the years I knewhim. I sent him often happy but occasionally despair-ing letters over the years, which he always, alwaysanswered with kind guidance.

Everyone knows what a great designer HermannZapf was. But he was also a generous mentor, abrilliant mind, a stunning penman and a brave fighterfor original design.

I loved that guy.

⋄ Kris Holmeslucidafonts.com

Hermann Zapf and his calligraphy and type designclasses at RIT, summer 1979. Zapf stands in brightlight, while the rest of us are in darkness. I am inthe blue dress, standing above the kneeling man insunglasses (Ned Bunnell). Behind and to my left isJerry Kelly, talented calligrapher, book designer, andauthor of About More Alphabets, covering Zapf’s mostrecent type designs. Behind and to my right is ChuckBigelow, my long-time studio partner and co-designerof the Lucida fonts. On the far left, the kneelingwoman is the late Dorothy Dehn, accomplishedcalligrapher and teacher.

I watch Zapf closely. So does Julian Waters atlower left.

With Hermann as jurors at the Linotype Arabic Typecontest, 2005.

The same two of us, more light, more joking,more motion blur.


Digital typography with Hermann Zapf

Peter Karow

Hermann Zapf was involved in many of the demandsfor digital typefaces which came into existence from1972 through 1997. These issues included formats,variations, interpolation, rasterizing, hinting, andgrayscaling.

Within modern text composition, digital text isa special part that should proceed without manualassistance and human layout. Up to now, the mile-stones were these: kerning, optical scaling, paragraphcomposition (H-program), and chapter composition(chapter fit).

Digital typefaces

In 1972, creative typesetting professionals producedvariations manually using their photographic experi-ence and a phototypesetting machine to make fontswith contours and shadows. Naturally, shadowingas well as contouring were my next features, which Istarted on 26 February 1973. This date might be re-garded as the birth of “digital typefaces”: new formswere generated automatically (see Figure 1).

My programs crashed quite often and generatedsubstandard looking results. But anyhow, I got it fly-ing further and further. That influenced my decisionto call the software Ikarus [6] in 1974.

The first time I met Hermann Zapf was in thesummer of 1975. I had just completed the basic partsof the Ikarus program which could already generate“digital typefaces” in the form of contoured, slantedand shadowed versions based on hand-digitized out-lines.

Zapf was amazed to see what I could presentto him (see Figures 1 and 2). He decided to includeme with a presentation of Ikarus in his general pre-sentation which he had to give at the next ATypIconference in the fall of 1975 in Warsaw.

It began a close relationship between us. Thishad a very decisive influence on the future develop-ment of our company URW Software & Type GmbH.

These days, everyone regards all fonts on com-puters as digital fonts since they are stored in digitalformats such as OpenType. In the early seventies,we had long discussions with famous designers. Theyargued that pure mapping from analogue to digitalis not changing the basic quality of a typeface (oldproperties), namely its type, appearance, effect, ex-pression and congeniality. Therefore they assertedthat the typefaces only had digital images and weretherefore still analogue. “Digital” at that time wasregarded as a pseudo-property.

Figure 1: The first version of Ikarus-Format asstarted in 1972 (left). Contouring used to makeOutline and Inline versions, shadowing and contouringused to make Relief and Drop Shadow (right).

Figure 2: Typical desktop in 1972 with digitizertablet, “mouse”, keyboard (below), direct VDT,alphanumeric terminal, electronic digitizer.

Never did I hear such arguments from HermannZapf; he was already very familiar with computersand always very eager and demanding to see the nextinnovation.

Today, the property “digital” is not only ac-cepted but also embraced. It serves as an additionalcharacteristic which doesn’t interfere with the oldproperties and holds an extremely high significanceregarding a font. It allows and creates new andimportant functions which did not exist before.

With the invention of the Digiset by Rudolf Hellin 1965, typefaces were digitized for the first time.No additional ideas were put into place other thanusing them 1:1 for typesetting on the Digiset, scaledlinearly and displayed at resolutions between 1,000and 2,400 dpi. Hermann Zapf was engaged by Hell toconsult on typesetting and to design new typefaces.


Figure 3: Kerning can be regarded as a power that repulses characters the nearerthey come to each other, and that attracts characters the farther they get from eachother (left). Kerning can be used also to calculate character positions for overlappingand touching of text.

In 1985 during the yearly ATypI conference (thistime sponsored by Hell in Kiel) Hermann Zapf dis-cussed with me the problem that too many peoplewere talking about digital typefaces and unfortu-nately not knowing what they are really all about.So, I decided to write a book with the title “DigitalFormats for Typefaces” which he kindly corrected asa co-editor. Finally, we could present it in 1986 dur-ing the next ATypI conference in New York. Later Ichanged the title: it became “Digital Typefaces” [3].

Digital text

Being pushed by Hermann Zapf, I started automatickerning [4, 7] in 1980 together with Margret Al-brecht. We wanted to save money because the gen-eration of kerning tables along with left and rightside bearings took a lot of time in our typeface pro-duction. As in other cases of artificial intelligence,we had to go through several approaches throughoutthe years until 1987. Finally, we mixed programmedideas and heuristic parameters gained by process-ing a lot of existing kerning tables manufacturedby different companies. We expanded kerning toget overlapping and blending of characters in tightlycomposed words [9] (see Figure 3).

In hot metal printing, optical scaling wasusual [2]. In any case one had to cut the pointsizes individually, so it was a matter of knowledge,but not of money. This changed when phototype-setting came up and the possibility of linear scalingcame into existence. Optical scaling didn’t play arole at the beginning of DTP, however, a lot of people

wrote about it [1]. Hermann Zapf urged me to “dosomething”.

In 1991 at URW, we adopted the following ap-proach for text fonts. First, the smaller the typesize:

1) the wider the composition,

2) the thicker the strokes,

3) the broader the characters, especiallythe lowercase.

And second, the larger the type size in titles:

1) the more compact the composition,

2) the thinner the strokes, especially the hairlines,

3) the narrower the characters, especiallythe lowercase.

Simplified, one applies the rule that space andstroke width of light fonts (text fonts) are reducedor enlarged by 7% on the average if the point size isenlarged or reduced by a factor of 2 [8] (see Figure 4).For bold fonts the opposite is true.

To my knowledge, optical scaling was not em-ployed for bold fonts in the past because they weren’t(and still aren’t) used very often, and if so, they werecut just for these special cases in certain point sizesas a special effort.

Paragraph composition was our next projectin 1990 and it became the favorite of both of us.

We called the program H-engine. Developedwith and named after Hermann Zapf [5, 12] — it usesa justification per paragraph system— as describedby Donald E. Knuth [10, 11], along with “kerning


Figure 4: Different point sizes, which have beengenerated at the same size for the purpose ofcomparison.

on the fly” and expanding/condensing of charactersin order to obtain margin lines for a column thatare optically straight (optical margins), and achievetypeset spaces among words within lines of text thatare fairly constant in order to avoid rivers and creeks.

Rivers run vertically through poorly spacedwords in consecutive lines of text when the spacesbetween the words have the same space or a greaterspace than the distance between the baselines of thetext. In contrast, a creek is a less severe form wherethe spaces between words are accidentally too widewithin one line.

The basic feature of the H-engine, which wasprogrammed by Margret Albrecht, is to regard alllines of a given paragraph at once — making the jus-tification per paragraph. At first, all words orsyllables are distributed to the lines together in amanner where each line gets a line length nearest toits given individually parametrized width (as defaultthere is usually column width). The following opti-mization is controlled by minimizing the typographi-

cal demerits, which are obtained from a function ofthe actual line lengths, given line lengths, given linewidths and tolerances of the layout parameters.

If hyphenation is turned on, words are replacedby syllables. The H-engine has to follow a lot ofexceptions and to provide solutions for them, e.g.ligature substitution, consecutive hyphens and goodor bad locations for hyphenation within a word. Thislevel of text/typographic detail promotes a betterfit and contributes to the reader’s comfort (see Fig-ure 5).

A comparison between the H-engine and today’stypical composition tools demonstrates the superi-ority of the H-engine (see Figure 6). In 1995, the“H-engine” was implemented in InDesign by Adobe.This has been a big step in digital text composition.

I believe that not too many people learned thatmuch about the “digital side” of Hermann Zapf asDon Knuth and me. I learned a lot from him andthank him.

References

[1] André, A., Vatton, I.: “Dynamic Optical Scal-ing and Variable-Sized Characters”, ElectronicPublishing 7(4): 231–250, 1994

[2] Johnson, B., “Optical Scaling”, Master’s Thesisfor RIT, Rochester, New York, 1994

[3] Karow, P., “Digital Typefaces”, Springer Verlag,Heidelberg, 1994

[4] Karow, P., “Font Technology”, Springer Verlag,Heidelberg, 1994

[5] Karow, P., “H-program”, brochure, URW Verlag,Hamburg, 1992

[6] Karow, P., “Ikarus”, German brochure, URWVerlag, Hamburg, 1975

[7] Karow, P., “Kernus”, brochure, URW Verlag,Hamburg, 1993

[8] Karow, P., “Optical Scaling”, brochure, URWVerlag, Hamburg, 1991

[9] Karow, P., “Set theory for characters”, brochure,URW Verlag, Hamburg, 1987

[10] Knuth, D. E., Plass, M. F., “Breaking para-graphs into lines”, Software—Practice & Expe-rience, 11/11), 1119–1184, Nov. 1982

[11] Knuth, D. E., “Mathematical Typography”,Stanford University, Cal., February 1978

[12] Zapf, H., Alphabet Stories—A Chronicle ofTechnical Developments, Mergenthaler EditionLinotype GmbH, Bad Homburg, 2007

⋄ Peter KarowHamburg, Germany


Figure 5: Comparison between H-engine and standard composition, without hyphenation.


Figure 6: Comparison between H-engine and standard composition, narrow columns,with and without hyphenation.


Richard Southall: 1937–2015

Jacques André and Alan Marshall

Richard Southall, typographer, teacher, scholar andwell-known specialist in the field of digital typog-raphy, passed away on May 26th, 2015, at the ageof 78.

In 2005, Richard published an important studyentitled Printer’s type in the twentieth century inwhich he outlined his own biography [21, p. xiv]:

The author joined Crosfield Electronics Ltd innorth London in the summer of 1965, to workon the specification of matrices for Lumitype-Photon photo composing machines. At theend of the 1960s he found himself in NewEngland, building a large high-resolution cam-era for photo matrix manufacture at PhotonInc. In the early 1970s he was responsible forthe typography of Crosfield’s novel scanned-matrix photo composing machine, the Mag-naset 226. At the University of Reading laterin the same decade he designed a series of di-rectly generated subtitling fonts for broadcasttelevision. In the 1980s he worked in Califor-nia, at Stanford University, Adobe SystemsInc. and the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center.Much of this work was at the disputed frontieracross which computer science and traditionaltypography contemplated one another in anuneasy truce. In the 1990s he was closely in-volved with the Colorado type making projectdescribed in Chapter 9.

Richard is typically modest in his preface, justas he was in his professional activities which are im-possible to sum up under one simple heading. Thevarious fields in which he was involved include photo-and digital typesetting, film subtitling, and the the-ory and history of typemaking [21, 22, 23].

After graduation from Cambridge with a degreein natural sciences in 1960, Richard worked for awhile in technical publishing (for Wireless World).His initial involvement with typemaking began whenhe took over from Matthew Carter the job of liai-son on typographical questions between the Britishscanner and phototypesetter manufacturer CrosfieldElectronics and the French type foundry Deberny &Peignot. His job was to oversee the production ofphoto-matrix disks by D&P for Crosfield’s version ofRené Higonnet and Louis Moyroud’s revolutionarysecond generation Lumitype phototypesetter whichwas produced under the name Photon 540. At firstsight that might seem a simple task. In fact it was ex-tremely complex because the manufacturing process

not only had to work to extremely fine tolerances,it also had to take into account myriad technicaldetails of type design, language and typographicalmarkets and conditions of production.

Typemaking in the 1960s and 1970s also had tocope with accelerating technical change. Phototype-setting quickly went through four distinct generationsfrom electromechanical to digital, before desktop pub-lishing and PostScript swept (nearly) all before themin the eighties. As printers and, increasingly, graphicdesigners struggled to make their way through whatLawrence Wallis once called “The phototypesettingjungle”, Richard never contented himself by simplyapplying the new technologies empirically to the jobin hand: rather, his aim was always to understandthe theoretical foundations which underpin the tech-niques and purpose of typemaking.

Over a period of about 20 years, he was typeconsultant to various different groups such as theAmerican Mathematical Society, Rank Xerox forwhom he worked on machine-user interfaces, BritishTelecom (BT), the Civil Aviation Authority and Na-tional Air Traffic Services (in the UK) on typographyfor information systems used by air traffic controllers,and, most recently, US West Direct (now US WestDex, see below).

One aspect of Richard’s career of particular in-terest to readers of TUGboat concerns his long-termuse and exploration of TEX and METAFONT.

As he was designing Computer Modern, DonKnuth invited Richard to visit Stanford. At thistime he was teaching type design at the Departmentof typography & graphic communication (Universityof Reading, UK, 1974–1983) and had an intimateknowledge of the punch cutter’s skills (such as theproportions of stems and the impact of size variationson letter forms and legibility). Knuth and Richardspent the entire month of April 1982, working about16 hours a day, revising Computer Modern from Ato z. While at Stanford he also took part in earlyTUG conferences [4] and co-taught the new version ofMETAFONT with Don Knuth and Chuck Bigelow. InJanuary 1985 he gave the first METAFONT tutorialin Rennes [5, 7] and had the opportunity to workone year at the Université Louis-Pasteur in Stras-bourg (with Jacques Désarménien, who had been atStanford in 1983–84, and Dominique Foata) wherehe designed a font using METAFONT [9].

Throughout this period he kept in touch withresearchers in the digital field of typography throughconferences such as Raster imaging and digital typog-raphy, the Didot project, and Electronic publishing,in which he was involved as speaker/author, as amember of scientific committee, or as editor [15].

Jacques André and Alan Marshall


It was a great pleasure to work with him, for he wasconscientious, competent and hard to please!

Richard was not primarily a type designer. Hisunique knowledge and skills placed him at the meet-ing point of type design and computer science. And