Sep21 TUG news: conferences, Computers&Typesetting Jubilee, CTAN

[TeX Users Group]

Dear TeXers,

The month of August was special for us: we held the second online TUG
conference: https://tug.org/tug2021. It was a resounding success with
four days packed with presentations, interviews, lectures, workshops and
tours. I am immensely grateful to the people from the organizing
committee, session chairs, speakers, attendees -- everybody who made
this possible. The TUGboat proceedings issue is being finalized, and the
videos will be posted when available on our YouTube channel:
  https://youtube.com/c/texusersgroup

TUG2021 had a rather large number of participants: 406 persons
registered for the conference. This is much more than has ever attended
a previous meeting. One of the lessons is that we should add an online
part to our future (hopefully) in-person conferences.

This is the first time we tried to have an informal AGM during the
conference.  It was an interesting and encouraging experiment, and we
nnmay want to develop the rules of online meetings for the unfortunate
eventuality of having online-only TUG conferences in the future.

One hotly debated topic at the AGM was whether the current four-year
terms for TUG directors prevent some people from serving.  The Board
consensus is that (i) for most (but not all) people it takes several
years to fully learn the craft of TUG steering; (ii) nevertheless
any director may step down before the end of their term, and even
(iii) announce the intention to resign before the full term in
their election statement.

Speaking of conferences, our friends at DANTE tell us that the Autumn
meeting will be held online:
  https://www.dante.de/veranstaltungen/herbst2021/

The fifteenth ConTeXt meeting will take place in person in Bassenge,
Belgium, on September 20--25, 2021:
  https://meeting.contextgarden.net/2021/

And TeXConf2021 (Japan) will take place online on November 13.  The (free)
registration deadline is October 9,  https://texconf2021.tumblr.com/ 

The news of another notable conference was communicated by Yannis
Haralambous: Grapholinguistics in the 21st century: From graphemes to
knowledge, Palaiseau, France, June 8-10, 2022:
  https://grafematik2022.sciencesconf.org/
It is endorsed by ACL (Association for Computational Linguistics) and by
ATypI (Association Typographique Internationale). Submission deadline:
January 10th, 2022.

In other news, Pearson Publishing has recently released the Jubilee
(35th anniversary) printing of Computers & Typesetting by DEK:
For the first time, PDF editions are offered as well as hardcover.
  https://informit.com/tex/jubilee
(You have to click around to get to the different formats.)

Pearson generously offers TUG members an exclusive 40% discount on
either ebook or hardcover (but not both combined) as a membership
benefit. Visit https://tug.org/members/ with your TUG login and password
to get the discount code. (Join or renew with TUG at
https://tug.org/join/.)

Finally, here is Knuth's note about the new printings:
  https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/abcde.html#jubilee

Unfortunately, the beloved spiral editions of The TeXbook and
The Metafontbook are now out of print: today you have a choice of either
Jubilee hardcover or Jubilee PDF.  Having been the favorites of many
TeXnicians for years, these books now have a chance to become rarities
and treasured heirlooms.

The deadline for the next (regular) issue of TUGboat is October 15.
See https://tug.org/TUGboat/location.html for author information and tips.

New CTAN packages in August:
- biblatex-lncs, BibLaTeX style for Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science;
- etl, expandable token list operations;
- gamebooklib, macros for setting numbered entries in shuffled order;
- geradwp, document class for the Cahiers du GERAD series;
- graphicscache, cache includegraphics calls;
- hvlogos, print TeX-related names as logo;
- keyparse, key-based parser;
- lambdax, use Lambda expression within LaTeX;
- makelabels, add a `\makelabels' feature to KOMA-Script letter classes;
- mecaso, formulas frequently used in rigid body mechanics;
- nchairx, mathematical physics macros from W\"urzburg University;
- nwafuthesis, a thesis template package for Northwest A&F University, China;
- scrambledenvs, create and print scrambled environments;
- smart-eqn, automatic math symbol styling for LaTeX documents;
- styledcmd, handling multiple versions of user-defined macros;
- tikzbricks, drawing bricks with TikZ;
- uni-titlepage, universal titlepages, configurable and with predefined styles;
- visualfaq-fr, FAQ LaTeX visuelle francophone;
- zref-check, flexible cross-references with contextual checks based on zref.

Happy TeXing,
Boris Veytsman, TUG president