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TUGboat, Volume 37 (2016), No. 2 115

TUG 2016 in TorontoNorbert Preining

In 2016, the TUG conference was held in Toronto,Canada. The following was originally published onmy blog (preining.info/blog/tag/tug2016) andedited for publication. So you want to know whatyou missed if you weren’t able to be there? Here aremy very personal recollections!

1 First pre-conference excursionThis year, the TUG conference was held in Toronto,Canada, and our incredible host Pavneet Arora man-aged to put together a busy program of excursionsand events around the real conference. The −1st day(yeah, you read right, the minus-first day), that istwo days before the actual conference started, wasdedicated to an excursion to enjoying wines at thewine estate Château des Charmes, followed by a visitto Niagara Falls.

What can I say, if the first thing after gettingout of the bus is a good wine, then there is nothingto go wrong . . .

I had arrived in Toronto already two days earlierin the late afternoon, and spent Friday relaxing,recovering from the long flight, walking the city abit, trying to fix my cold, and simply going slowly.Saturday morning we met at a comfortable 10amin the morning (though still too early for me, dueto jet lag and a slightly late evening before), butthe first two hours of the bus drive allowed us torelax. Our first stop was the Château des Charmes,an impressive building surrounded by vineyards.

We were immediatelystarted off with a sand-wich lunch with white, red,and ice wine. Good start!And although the breakfastwasn’t that long ago, the de-licious sandwiches (at leastthe vegetarian ones I tried)were a good foundation forthe wine.

After replenishing ourenergy reserves, we wereready to start our tour.Our guide, very, if not over, enthusiastic, explainedthat practically everything related to wine in Canadahas been started at this Château from the currentowner— the château system where farmer and wineproducer are the same, import of European grapes,winter protection methods, wine making—I wasclose to forgetting our Roman and Greek ancestors.

At least she admitted that the ice wine was

brought over by an Austrian—but perfection wasdone here, where the controls of the government aremuch stricter than anywhere else . . . hmmm, some-how I cannot completely believe all this narrative,but at least it is enjoyable. So now that we know allabout the history, we dive into the production pro-cess area, and the barrel space, always accompaniedwith extensive comments and (self-)praise.

After this exhaustiveand exhausting round, weare guided back to the pa-tio to taste another threedifferent wines, a white (bittoo warm, not so much mytaste), a rosé (very good),and a red made from a newgrape variety that has mutated first here on theChâteau (interesting). As I didn’t have enough, Itried to get something out of the big containers di-rectly, but without success!

Happy and content, and after passing throughthe shopping area, we boarded the bus to continuetowards Niagara Falls. Riding by some quite nicehouses of definitely quite rich people (although Pav-neet told me that houses in Toronto are far moreexpensive than those here—how can anyone affordthis?), we first have a view onto the lower Niagarariver. A bit further on we are let out to see hugewhirlpools in the river, where boat tours are bringingsightseers on a rough ride into the pool.

Only a slight bit further on we finally reached thefalls proper, with a great view of the American Fallsat full power, and the Horseshoe Falls further up.

We immediately boarded a boat tour makingthe short trip to the Horseshoe Falls. Lining upwith hundreds and hundreds of other spectators, weprepare for the splash with red rain wear (the US sideuses blue; forbid that any side would rescue a wrongperson and create an illegal immigrant!). The trippasses first under the American Falls and continuesright into the mist that fills all the area in the middleof the Horseshoe Falls. Spectacular impression withwalls of water falling down on both sides.

Returned from the splash and having dried ourfeet, we walk along the ridge to see the HorseshoeFalls from close up. The amount of water fallingdown these falls is incredible, and so is the erosionthat creates the brown foam on the water down in the

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pool, made up from pulverized limestone. Blessed aswe were, the sun was smiling all day and we got anice rainbow right in the falls.

The surroundings of the falls are less impressive—Disneyland? Horror cabinet? Jodel bar? A wildmixture of amusement park style locations squeezedtogether and overly full with people—as if enjoyingthe nature itself would not be enough. All engulfedby ever-blasting loudspeaker music. The only plus Icould find in this encampment of forced happinesswas a local craft beer brewer where one could tasteeight different beers— I made it only to four, though.

Finally night was falling, and we moved down tothe falls again to enjoy the illumination of the falls.

After this wonderful finish we boarded the busand back to Toronto, where we arrived around mid-night. A long but very pleasurable Day Minus One!

2 Second pre-conference excursionThe second pre-conference day was dedicated tobooks and beers, with a visit to an exquisite printstudio, and a beer tasting session at one of the notedcraft breweries in Canada. In addition we could geta view into the Canadian lifestyle by visiting Pav-neet’s beautiful house in the countryside, as well asenjoying traditional style pastries from a bakery.

In short, a perfect combination for us typogra-phy and beer savvy freaks!

This morning we had rather an early start fromthe hotel. Soon the bus left downtown Torontoand entered countryside of Ontario, large landscapesfilled with huge (for my Japanese feeling) estatesand houses, separated by fields, forests and wildlandscape. Very beautiful and inviting to live there.On our way to the printing workshop we stoppedat Pavneet’s house for a very short visit of the ex-terior, which includes mathematics in the bricking.According to Pavneet, his kids hate to see math onthe wall— I would be proud to have it.

A bit further on we entered Erin, where thePorcupine’s Quill is located. A small building alongthe street, one could easily overlook this rare jewel!

Even more so considering that according to the own-ers, Google Maps has a bad error which would leadyou to a completely different location. This printingworkshop, led by Tim and Elke Inkster, producesbooks in a traditional style using an old Heidelbergoffset printing machine.

Elke introduced us to the sewing of folded sig-natures together with a lovely old sewing machine.It was the first time I actually saw one in action.

Tim, the head master of the printing shop, firstentertained us with stories about Chinese publishersvisiting them in the old cold-war times before divinginto explanations of the actual machines present, likethe Heidelberg offset printing machine.

In the back of the basement of the little studiois a huge folding machine, which cuts up the bigsignatures of 16 pages and folds them into bundles.An impressive example of tricky engineering.

Due to the small size of the printing studio, wewere split into two groups, and while the other groupgot its guided tour, we grabbed coffee and traditionalcookies and pastries from the nearby Holtom’s bakery.Loads of nice pastries with various filling, my favoritebeing the slightly salty cherry pie, and above all therhubarb-raspberry pie.

To my absolute astonish-ment I also found there a Vi-ennese “Kaisersemmel”, called“Kaiser bun” here, but keepingthe shape and the idea (but

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unfortunately not the crispy crackly quality of theoriginal in Vienna). Of course I got two of them, to-gether with a nice jam from the region, and enjoyedthis “Viennese breakfast” the next day morning.

Leaving the Quill, weheaded for a lunch in anice pizzeria (I got PizzaToscana) which also servedexcellent local beer—howI would like to have some-thing like this in Japan!Our last stop on this day’s

excursion was Stone Hammer Brewery, one of themost famous craft breweries in Canada.

Although they won’twin a prize for typogra-phy (besides one page of acoaster there that carried anice pun), their beers areexquisite. We got five dif-ferent beers to taste, plusextensive explanations onbrewing methods and differ-ences. Now I finally under-stand why most of the new craft breweries in Japanare making ales: ales don’t need a long process andare ready for sale in rather short time, compared toe.g., lagers.)

Also at the Stone Ham-mer Brewery I spotted thisvery nice poster on the wallof the toilet. And I cannotagree more, everything caneasily be discussed over agood beer— it calms downaversions, makes even theworst enemies friends, andis healthy for both the mindand body.

Filled with excellentbeer, some of us (notablyan unnamed US TEXnician and politician), stockedup on beers to carry home. I was very tempted toget a huge batch, but putting cans into an airplaneseemed not to be an optimal idea. Since we aretalking cans, I was surprised to hear that many craftbeer brewers nowadays prefer cans due to their betterprotection of the beer from light and oxygen, bothkillers of good beer.

Before leaving we took a last look at the PeriodicTable of Beer Types, which left me in awe about howmuch I don’t know and probably never will know. Inparticular, I heard the first time of a “Vienna stylebeer”—Vienna is not really famous for beer, better

to say, it is infamous. So maybe this is a differentVienna than my home town that is meant here.

Another two hour bus ride brought us back toToronto, where we met with other participants at thereception in a restaurant of Mediterranean cuisine,where I could enjoy for the first time in years a goodtahina and hummus.

All around another excellent day, now I’d justlike to have two days of holidays; guess I’ll need torelax in the lectures starting tomorrow.

3 First dayThe first day of the conference itself started withan excellent overview of what one can do with TEX,spanning from traditional scientific journal styles togenerating router configuration for cruising ships.

All this was crowned with an invited talk byKevin Larson from Microsoft’s typography depart-ment on how to support reading comprehension.Pavneet Arora, Passport to the TEX canvasPavneet, our never-sleeping host and master of orga-nization, opened the conference with a philosophicalintroduction, touching upon a wide range of topicsranging from Microsoft, Twitter to the beauty ofbooks, pages, and type. I think at some point heeven mentioned TEX, but I can’t remember for sure.His words set a very nice and all-inclusive stage, acommunity that is open to all kind of influences with-out any disregard or prejudice. Let us hope that thisreflects reality. Thanks Pavneet.Geoffrey Poore, Advances in PythonTEXOur first regular talk was a report on recent ad-vances in PythonTEX, a package that allows includ-ing Python code in your TEX document. Startingwith an introduction to PythonTEX, Geoff discussedan improved verbatim environment, fvextra, whichpatches fancyvrb, and improved interaction betweenTikZ and PythonTEX.

As I am a heavy user of listings for my teach-ing on algebraic specification languages, I will surelytake a look at this package and see how it comparesto listings.

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Stefan Kottwitz, TEX in industry I: Program-ming Cisco network switches using TEX Nextwas Stefan from Lufthansa Industry Solutions, whoreported first about his working environment, cruiseships (i.e., small floating towns) with a very demand-ing IT infrastructure which he has to design andimplement. Then he introduced us to his way ofgenerating IP configurations for all the devices us-ing TEX. The reason he chose this method is thatit allows him to generate at the same time properdocumentation.

It was surprising for me to hear that by usingTEX he could far more efficiently and quickly producewell designed and easily accessible documentation,which both helped the company as well as made theclients happy!Stefan Kottwitz, TEX in industry II: Design-ing converged network solutions After a coffeebreak, Stefan continued his exploration into indus-trial usage of TEX, this time about using TikZ togenerate graphics representing the network topologyon the ships.Boris Veytsman, Making ACM LATEX stylesNext up was Boris, who brought us back to moretraditional realms of TEX when he guided us into theabyss of ACM LATEX styles he tried to maintain forsome time, until he plunged into a complete rewriteof the styles.Frank Mittelbach, Alice goes floating: globaloptimized pagination including picture place-ments The last talk before lunch (probably strate-gically placed, otherwise Frank could continue forhours and hours) was on global optimization of pagebreaks, using an algorithm analogous to TEX’s linebreaking. This has been a wish among TEXies fordecades! Frank showed us what can and cannotbe done with current (Lua)LATEX, and how to playaround with global optimization of pagination, usingAlice in Wonderland as a running example. We canonly hope that his package is soon available for usto at least play around with.Thai lunch Pavneet organized three different cui-sines for the three days of the conference. Today’swas Thai with spring rolls, fried noodles, interestingorange noodles, and chicken something.Michael Doob, baseball rules summary Afterlunch Michael gave us an accessible explanation ofthe most arcane rules a game can have—the rulesof baseball—by using pseudocode. I think the totalnumber of loc needed to explain the overall ruleswould fill more pages than the New York phonebook,so I am deeply impressed by those who can under-

stand these rules. Some of us even wandered off inthe late afternoon to see how a real game matchedup with Michael’s explanations.

Amartyo Banerjee, A Telegram bot for print-ing LATEX files Next up was Amartyo who showeda Telegram (as in messenger application) bot, run-ning on a Raspberry Pi, which receives (LA)TEX filesand sends back compiled PDF files. While it is notready for general consumption (if you sneeze thebot will crash!), it looks like a promising applica-tion. Furthermore, it is nice to see how open APIs(like Telegram) can spur development of useful tools,while closed APIs (including threatening users, likeWhatsApp) hinder this.

Norbert Preining, Security improvements inthe TEX Live Manager and installer Next upwas my own talk about beefing up the security of TEXLive by providing integrity and authenticity checksvia GnuPG, a feature that has been introduced withthe recent release of TEX Live 2016.

The following discussion gave me several goodideas on how to further improve security and usabil-ity.

Arthur Reutenauer, The TEX Live M sub-project (and open discussion) Arthur present-ed the TEX Live M (where the M stands for Mojca,who couldn’t attend, unfortunately) project: Theiraim is to provide a curated and verified subset ofTEX Live that is sufficiently complete for many ap-plications, and easier for distributors and packagers.

We had a lively discussion after Arthur’s shortpresentation, mostly about why TEX Live does nothave an “on-the-fly” installation like MiKTEX. Iinsisted that this is already possible, using the “tex-on-the-fly” package which uses the mktextex infra-structure script, but also caution against using it bydefault due to delays induced by repeatedly read-ing the TEX Live database. I think this would be aworthwhile project for someone interested in learningthe internals of TEX Live, but I am not sure whetherI want to invest time into this feature myself.

Another discussion point was about testing in-frastructure, which I am currently working on. Thisis in fact high on my list, to have some automatic min-imal functionality testing—a LATEX package shouldat least load!

Kevin Larson, Reading between the lines:Improving comprehension for students Hav-ing a guest from Microsoft is rare in our somewhatUnix-centered environment, so big thanks to Pavneetagain for setting up this contact, and big thanks toKevin for coming.

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Kevin gave us a profound introduction to read-ing disabilities and how to improve reading compre-hension. Starting with an excursion into what makesa font readable and how Microsoft develops optimallyreadable fonts, he then turned to reading disabilitieslike dyslexia, and how markup of text can increasestudents’ comprehension. He also toppled my long-term belief that dyslexia is connected to the similarshape of letters which are somehow visually malpro-cessed—this was the scientific theory from the 1920sthrough the 70s, but since then all researchers haveabandoned this interpretation; dyslexia is now linkedto problems linking shape to phonemes.

Kevin did an excellent job with a slightly difficultaudience— some people being picky about grammardifferences between British and US English and tryingto derail the discussion, and even more the highpercentage of typographically somehow sophisticatedparticipants.

After the talk I had a lengthy discussion withKevin about if/how this research can be carriedover to non-Roman writing systems, in particularKanji/Hanzi based writing systems, where dyslexiaprobably shows itself in different context. Kevinalso mentioned that they want to add interwordspace to Chinese to help learners of Chinese (children,foreigners) parse text, and studies showed that thishelps a lot in comprehension.

On a meta-level, this talk bracketed with themorning introduction by Pavneet, describing an openenvironment with stimulus back and forth in alldirections. I am very happy that Kevin took thetime to come in his tight schedule, and I hope thatthe future will bring better cooperation—at the endwe are all working somehow toward the same ends—only the tools differ.

Dinner After the closingof the session, one part ofour group went off to thebaseball game, while an-other group dived into anearby Japanese-style Iza-kaya where we managed tokill huge amounts of sakeand quite an amount offood. The photo shows me after the first bottleof sake, while just sipping an intermediate smallamount of genshu (a strong undiluted sake) beforecontinuing to the next bottle.

An interesting and stimulating first day of TUG,and I am sure that everyone was looking forward today 2.

4 Second dayThe second day of TUG 2016 was again full of inter-esting talks, spanning from user experiences to highlytechnical details of astrological chart drawing, andgraphical user interfaces for TikZ to the invited talkby Robert Bringhurst on the Palatino type family.

With all these interesting things there is only onecomplaint— I cannot get out of the dark basementand enjoy the city . . .

After a evening full of sake and a good night’ssleep we were ready to dive into the second day.

Kaveh Bazargan, A graphical user interfacefor TikZ The opening speaker of Day 2 was Kaveh.He first gave us a quick run-down on what he isdoing for business and what challenges publishersare facing in these times. After that he introduced usto his new development of a command line graphicaluser interface for TikZ. I wrote “command line” onpurpose, because the editing operations are shortcommands issued on a kind of command line, whichgive an immediate graphical feedback. The base ofthe technique is a simplified TikZ-like meta languagethat is not only easy to write, but also easy to parse.

While the set of supported commands and fea-tures of TikZ is not complete, I think the basic ideais a good one, with plenty of potential.

Matthew Skala, Astrological charts with horo-scop and starfont Next up was Matthew whointroduced us to the involved task of typesettingastrological charts. He included comparisons withvarious commercial and open source solutions, whereMatthew of course, but me too, felt that his chartscame off quite well!

As an extra bonus we got some charts of famoussingers, as well as the TUG 2016 horoscope.

David Tulett, Development of an e-textbookusing LATEX and PStricks David reported onhis project to develop an e-textbook on decisionmodeling (lots of math!) using LATEX and PStricks.His e-book is of course a PDF. There was a lot ofvery welcome feedback— legally copyable (CC-BY-NC-ND) textbooks for sciences are rare and we needmore of them.

Christian Gagné, An Emacs-based writingworkflow inspired by TEX and WEB, target-ing the Web Christian’s talk revolved around edit-ing and publishing using org-mode of Emacs and thevarious levels of macros one can use in this setup. Hefinished with a (sadly) incomprehensible-to-me visionof a future equational logic-based notation mode. Ihave used equational logic in my regular job, andI am not completely convinced that this is a good

TUG 2016 in Toronto


approach for typesetting and publishing—but whoknows, I am looking forward to a more logic-basedapproach!

Frank Mittelbach, In memoriam: SebastianRahtz (1955–2016) Frank recalled Sebastian’smany contributions to a huge variety of fields, andrecalled our much-missed colleague with many photosand anecdotes.

Jim Hefferon, A LATEX reference manual Jimreported about the current state of an unofficialLATEX reference manual, which tries to provide doc-umentation orthogonal to the many introductionand user guides available, by providing a straightdown-to-earth reference manual with all the technicaldetails required. He urged potential contributors totake a look (http://home.gna.org/latexrefman).

As I also had to write a reference manual fora computer language, it was very interesting to seehow this dealt with many of the same problems I amfacing.

Arthur Reutenauer, Hyphenation past andfuture: hyph-utf8 and patgen Arthur reportedon the current state of the hyphenation patternproject, and in particular the license and usage hellthey recently came into with large corporations sim-ply grabbing the patterns without proper attribution.In a second part, he gave quick rough sketch of hisdesign of a reimplementation of patgen.

Federico Garcia-De Castro, TEXcel? As anartist organizing large festivals Federico has to fightwith financial planning and reports. He seemed notcontent with the abilities of the usual suspects, sohe developed a way to do Excel-like bookkeeping inTEX. Nice idea! I hope I can use this system for thenext conference I have to organize.

Jennifer Claudio, A brief reflection on TEXand end-user needs The last speaker of the morn-ing was Jennifer who gave us a real-world end-user’sview of the TEX environment, and the respectiveneeds. This sort of talk is a very much welcomedcontrast to technical talks and hopefully all of usdevelopers take her suggestions to heart.

Jaeyoung Choi, MFCONFIG: Metafont plug-in module for the Freetype rasterizer Jae-young reported about an impressive project to makeMetafont fonts available to fontconfig and thuswindowing systems. He also explained their devel-opment of a new font format Stemfont, which is aMetafont-like system that can work also for CJKfonts, and which they envisage to be built into allkinds of mobile devices.

Michael Sharpe, New font offerings:Cochineal, Nimbus15 and LibertinusT1MathMichael reported on his latest font projects. Thefirst two being extensions of the half-made, half-butchered, rereleased URW fonts, as well as an ex-tended math font project.

I talked to him over lunch one day, and askedhim how many man-days he need for these fonts,and his answer was, a lot: For the badly messed upnew URW fonts, like Cochineal, he guessed about fiveman-months of work, while other fonts only neededa few days. We all can be deeply thankful to all thework he is investing into all these font projects.

Robert Bringhurst, The evolution ofthe Palatino tribe The second invited talk wasfrom Robert Bringhurst, famous for his wide contri-butions to typography, book culture in general, aswell as poetry. He gave a quick historic overview onthe development of the Palatino tribe of fonts, withlots of beautiful photos.

Unfortunately, I was a bit disappointed thatthe presentation was more a listing of historical factsthan his own ideas and thoughts. Of course, a personas accomplished as Robert Bringhurst is so full ofanecdotes and background knowledge that it wasstill a great pleasure to listen and lots of things tolearn, I only hoped for a bit more enthusiasm.

TUG Annual General Meeting The afternoonsession finished with the TUG Annual General Meet-ing; Stefan Kottwitz wrote a separate report, follow-ing this one.

Herbert Schulz, Optional workshop:TeXShop tips & tricks After the AGM, Herbfrom MacTEX and TeXShop gave a workshop onTeXShop. Since I am not a Mac user, I skipped.

Another late afternoon program consisted ofan excursion to Eliot’s bookshop, where many of usstocked up on great books. This time again I skippedand took a nap.

Dinner In the evening we had a rather interestinginformal dinner in the food court of some building,where only two shops were open and all of us linedup in front of the Japanese curry shop, and thengulped down from plastic boxes. Hmm, not my styleI have to say, not even for informal dinner. But atleast I could meet up with a colleague from Debianand get some GPG key signing done. And of course,talking to all kinds of people around.

The last step for me was in the pub oppositethe hotel, with beer and whiskey/scotch selected byspecialists in the field.

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5 Third dayThe last day of TUG 2016, or rather the last dayof talks, brought four one-hour talks from specialguests, and several others, where many talks told uspersonal stories and various histories. A great finishof a great conference.Jennifer Claudio, The case for justified textDue to a strange timezone bug in my calendar pro-gram, I completely overslept a morning meeting andbreakfast, as well as the first talk, so unfortunatelyI don’t have anything to report about this surelyinteresting talk comparing justification in variousword processors and TEX.Boris Veytsman and Leila Akhmadeeva, Arejustification and hyphenation good or bad forthe reader? Still half dizzy and without coffee, Iunfortunately couldn’t follow this talk (with Leilajoining us via video from Russia), and only wokeup near the end when there was a lot of interestingdiscussion about speed reading and its non-existence(because it is simply skimming over text), and im-provements on reading comprehension.Charles Bigelow, Looking for legibility Thelast special guest, Charles Bigelow, presented a hugepool of research and work on readability, and how at-titude and usage of fonts change over time. A very in-volving and well laid out talk, full of interesting back-ground images and personal opinions and thoughts.Chuck also touched on topics of readability on mod-ern devices like e-readers and mobiles. He comparedrecent developments in font design for mobile de-vices with their work on Lucida 20+ years ago, andconcluded that both arrived at the same solutions.

A very educating and amusing talk packed fullwith information on readability. I will surely revisitthe recording in a study session.David Walden, Some notes on the history ofdigital typography David touched on many top-ics of the history of digital typography which hehas experienced himself over the years: First thedevelopment of newspaper production and printing,then the evolution from simple text editors over wordprocessors to full-fledged DTP programs. Finally hetouched on various algorithmic problems that appearin the publishing business.Tim Inkster, The beginning of my careerTim, our fantastic guide through his print shop thePorcupine’s Quill on the second excursion day, talkedabout his private ups and downs in the printing busi-ness, all filled with an infinite flow of funny storiesand surprising anecdotes. Without slides, or any-thing but his voice and stories, he kept us hanging on

his words without a break. I recommend watchingthe recording of his talk because one cannot conveythe funny comments and great stories he shared withus in this simple and so entertaining talk.

Joe Clark, Type and tiles on the TTC Joeunveiled the history of the rise and fall of under-ground types and tiles in Toronto. It is surprisingto me that a small metro network as in Toronto canhave such a long history of changes of design, lay-out, presentation. Some of the photos completelystymied me—how can anyone put up signs like that?I was thinking. To quote Joe (hopefully I remembercorrectly):You see what happens without adult supervision.

Abdelouahad Bayar, Towards an operational(LA)TEX package supporting optical scaling ofdynamic mathematical symbols A technicaltalk about an attempt to provide optical scalingof mathematical symbols. As far as I understand ittries to improve on the TEX way of doing extensiblemath symbols by gluing parts together at the fontlevel. It seems to be highly involved and technicallyinteresting project, but I couldn’t completely graspthe aim of it.

John Plaice, Zebrackets: A score of yearsand delimiters John introduced us to Zebrack-ets, stripped parentheses and brackets, to help uskeep track of pairing of those beasts. But as weknow, zebras are very elusive animals, . . . and so wesaw lots of stripped brackets around. The idea ofbetter markup of matching parentheses is definitelyworth developing.

Charles Bigelow, Probably approximately notquite correct: Revise, repeat Chuck’s secondtalk, this time on the history of the Lucida fonts,from the early beginnings drawn on graph paperto recent developments using FontLab producingOpenType fonts. A unique crash course through thedevelopment of one of the biggest families of fonts,and one of the first outside Computer Modern withsupport for proper math typesetting in TEX.

Aggressively legible!

This was one of the key phrases that popped upagain and again—aggressively legible—mostly withnegative connotations, toward too-fat symbols or too-big Arabic letters. But for me this font family is stillclose to my heart. I purchased it back then from Y&Yfor my PhD thesis, and since then have upgraded tothe TUG version including the OpenType fonts, andI use them for most of my presentations. Maybe Ilike the aggressive legibility!

TUG 2016 in Toronto


Chuck slid in lots of nice comments about hispartner Kris Holmes, the development practices intheir work, stories of business contacts, and manymore, making this talk a very lively and amusing,and at the same time very educating talk.Joe Clark, Type and Tile Subway Tour Thisconcluded the TUG conference talks, and we thankedPavneet for his excellent organization. But since westill have up to two days more of excursions, manypeople dispersed quickly, just to meet again for aoptional Type and Tile Tour—3–5 subway stopswith discussion of typesetting there.

This guided tour through the underground ofToronto, guided by Joe Clark who spoke in the morn-ing on this topic, was simply too popular. I thinkthere were around 25 participants when we left. Ithought that this will not work out properly, anddecided to leave the group and wander around alone.Dinner The last program point for the day wasdinner with a blues music concert at the nearbyJazz Bistro. Excellent live music in a bit slick andsophisticated atmosphere was a good finish for thisexcellent day. With Herb from MacTEX and hiswife we killed two bottles of red wine, before slowlytingling back to the hotel.

6 Fourth dayTalks have finished, and as a special present to theparticipants, Pavneet has organized an excursionthat probably was one of the best I ever had. Firstwe visited the Toronto Reference Library where wewere treated to a delicious collection of rare books(not to mention all the other books and architecture),and then a trip through the Ismaili Centre Torontoand the Aga Khan Museum.

Kelmscott press edition from 1892 of WilliamMorris’ A Dream of John Ball.

All these places were great pieces of architecturewith excellent samples of the writing and printingart. And after all that and not to be left out, theconference dinner evening cruise!

Our first stop was the Toronto Reference Library.Designed by Raymond Moriyama, it features a largeopen atrium with skylights, and it gives the libraryan open and welcoming feeling. We were told thatit resembles a teacup that needs to be filled—withknowledge.

The library also features running water at sev-eral places— the architect had the idea that naturalambient noise is more natural for a library than theunnatural silence that never happens anyway.

Originally there waslots of greenery hanginginto the atrium, resemblingthe Hanging Gardens, butthat has been scrapped dueto financial reasons. Butthere was still this beauti-ful green oasis-like wall in

a corner of the library.We were guided first

to the fifth floor where thespecial collection is housed.And what a special col-lection. The librarian incharge had laid out about20 exquisite books startingfrom early illuminated man-uscripts over incunabula tohigh pieces of printing artfrom the 18th and 19th cen-turies. Here we have an illuminated manuscript inCarolingian minuscule.

It was surprising for all of us in this specialcollection that all these books were simply laid outin front of us, that the librarian touched them andflipped pages without gloves, and above all, that hetold us that if one wants, it is common practice tocheck out these books for study sessions and enjoythem on the spot in the reading room. I don’t knowany other library that allows you to actually handlesuch rare and beautiful specimens!

In one of the books I found by chance a map of

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my hometown of Vienna. On this map from very oldtimes, the place where I grew up is still uninhabitedsomewhere in the far upper right corner of the map.Times have changed.

After we left this open and welcoming treasurehouse of beautiful books, we moved to the Aga KhanMuseum and Ismaili Centre Toronto, which are stand-ing face-to-face separated by some water ponds inthe Aga Khan park a bit outside of central Toronto.Below is the Ismaili Centre as seen from the AgaKhan Museum entrance. The big glass dome is thecentral prayer room, and is illuminated at night. Justone detail—one can see in the outer wall one partthat looks like glass, too. This is the prayer alcove inthe back of the prayer hall, and is made from hugeslabs of onyx that are also lit up in the night.

The Ismaili Centre, designed by Charles Correa,combines modern functional and simple style withthe wonderful ornamental art of the Islam heritage.The inside of the Ismaili Centre features many piecesof exquisite art—calligraphy, murals, stone work.

Following the Ismaili Centre we turned to theAga Khan museum which documents Islamic art,science, and history with an extensive collection. Wedidn’t have much time, and in addition I had to dosome firefighting over the phone, but the short tripthrough the permanent collection with samples ofexcellent calligraphy was amazing.

Banquet cruise After returning from this lovelyexcursion and a short break, we set off for the last

stop for tonight, the dinner cruise. After a short busride we boarded our ship and off we went. Althoughthe beer selection was not on par with what we wereused to from craft breweries, the perfectly sized boatwith two decks and lots of places to hang aroundinvited us to many discussions and chitchats. Andfinally we could enjoy also the skyline of Toronto.

After the dinner we had some sweets, one ofwhich was a specially-made cake with the TUG 2016logo on it. I have to say, it was not only this cakebut the whole excellent, overwhelming, food we hadduring all these days, that will make me go on a dietwhen I am back in Japan. Pavneet organized for thelunch breaks three different style of kitchens (Thai,Indian, Italian), then the excursions to local brewersand and and. . . If it wouldn’t be for TEX, I wouldcall it a “Mastkur”.

During the cruise we also had a little ceremonythanking Jim for his work as president of TUG, andabove all Pavneet for this incredible, well organizedconference. I think everyone agreed that this wasthe most exceptional TUG conference in some time.

During this, Pavneetalso announced the win-ners of the TUG 2016 foun-tain pen auction. Thesepens have much history andtravel behind them (tug.org/tug2016/pens.html),and were presented to thespecial guests of the confer-ence. Two remaining penswere auctioned with pro-ceeds going to TUG. Thefirst one was handed overto Steve Grathwohl, and—to my utter surprise—thesecond one to myself. Sonow I am a happy owner of a TUG 2016 fountainpen. What a special feature!

Just one more detail about these pens: Theyare traditional style, so without ink capsules; one

TUG 2016 in Toronto


needs to insert the ink with a syringe. I guess I needto stock up a bit at home, and more importantly,train my really ugly handwriting, otherwise it wouldbe a shame to use this exquisite tool.

We returned to the harbor around 10pm, andback to the hotel, where there was much greetingand thanking at the end of a wonderful day.

I will leave on Friday morning to meet withfriends, thus I will not be participating in (and notreporting on) the last excursion of TUG 2016 tothe Georgian Bay area. I will leave Toronto andTUG 2016 with (nearly) exclusively good memoriesof excellent talks, great presentations, wonderful ex-cursions, and lots of things I have learned. I hopeto see all of the participants at next year’s TUGmeeting—and I hope I will be able to attend it.

One more thanks to Pavneet, you have done anincredible job. And last but not least, thanks to yourlovely wife for letting you do all this, I know howmuch time we stole from her.

� Norbert PreiningIshikawa, Japannorbert (at) preining dot infohttp://www.preining.info

Excursion to Georgian BayOn Friday, although many participants had left, therewas one more excursion, to the Georgian Bay area.This large bay, extending off of Lake Huron, was theinspiration to the Canadian impressionist landscapepainters known as the Group of Seven, who wereactive from the period before the first World Waruntil the early 1930s.

We first visited a public beach on the bay—more like a large lake—where several of our grouptook advantage of the opportunity to swim in thecalm water. (They assured me that it was quitepleasant.) The rest of us enjoyed the scenery, woodsand islands as far as the eye could see, with smallcottages along the shore, and imagined what it wouldlook like in other seasons.

From Georgian Bay we made our way to theMcMichael Canadian Art Collection, a public galleryin the village of Kleinburg, devoted largely to theGroup of Seven. Built around the collection ofRobert and Signe McMichael, and housed in theirmuch-expanded home, the collection, buildings, andproperty on which it is located were donated in 1965by the McMichaels to the Province of Ontario. Sincethen, the collection has been augmented by otherCanadian works donated by collectors, as well as byartists themselves. It now includes many contempo-rary pieces, and both traditional and contemporaryworks by First Nations and Inuit artists.

Our guide first introduced us to the works of theGroup of Seven. Although many of the Collection’sholdings of this Group were temporarily away forexhibit in larger cities’ museums, the core collectionon display showed a remarkable sensitivity to theCanadian landscape in all its moods. The buildingitself was designed by the Canadian architect LeoVenchiarutti to be an appropriate home for the col-lection, as well as (before it became a gallery) forthe McMichaels. Many of the windows look out onthe beautiful woods surrounding the building.

In addition to the permanent collection, severalspecial exhibits were on display. These includeda showing of contemporary textile art by ColleenHeslin; a “studio” selection of colorful paintings byJack Bush; and drawings and paintings from theperiod of the World War by A.Y. Jackson (one of theGroup of Seven) and Tom Thomson (closely affiliatedwith the Group of Seven, though not a member; hedied before the Group got its name) showing theirinfluences on one another.

One area we didn’t have time to explore ade-quately was the sculpture garden, which occupiesthe grounds of the Collection. The pieces nearestthe main building, and those we could glimpse far-ther away in the wooded parkland, are a compellinginvitation to return.

This is the 50th anniversary of the McMichaelCollection as a public institution. The website,mcmichael.com, is well worth a visit.

� Barbara Beeton

Barbara Beeton

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