Baskerville Volume 10 Number 1

The Annals of the UK-TEX Users’ Group uk.tug.org ISSN 1354-5930

Edited by Vol. 10.1 Jonathan Webley May 2009 Baskerville

Contents 1 Editorial

1 Editorial 2 Welcome to the revived Baskerville. Baskerville was for many years the journal of UK-TUG and 2 Baskerville Survey 2 archived copies are available through our website. 3 Events 3 The UK-TUG committee has decided to start anew publication of Baskerville and I have been co-opted 3.1 BachoTEX 2009 ...... 3 onto the committee as editor. This is the first 3.2 Call for TEX Pearls ...... 3 3.3 Mathematics and Fiction ...... 3 new issue. Since the purpose of TEX is to produce “marks on paper” Baskerville has been printed 3.4 EuroTEX 2009 ...... 3 3.5 TUG 2009 ...... 3 and posted out; though the PDF version has been 3.6 UKUUG Summer Conference 2009 . 4 emailed out and is also available on the web. Con- tact me if you do not wish to receive paper copies 4 The Hound 4 of subsequent issues. The journal is named after a serif typeface de- 5 Currency Symbols in LATEX 5 signed in 1757 by John Baskerville. Previous issues 5.1 The Dollar and the Pound ...... 5 of Baskerville used the Baskerville font but this is- 5.2 The Euro ...... 5 sue uses the default Computer Modern font. 5.3 And the rest of the World ...... 5 This particular issue is somewhat light in con- 6 Wikibooks 6 tent. The quality of future issues will depend on 6.1 Wikis ...... 6 you, the membership of UK-TUG. I do not intend to create all the content myself, and welcome con- 6.2 LATEX and MediaWiki ...... 7 6.3 Wikibooks ...... 7 tributions on matters relevant to TEX or UK-TUG. 6.4 Featured Book ...... 7 I think that a newsletter is central to the well- 6.5 Conclusion ...... 8 being of a user group such as ours, and I look for- 6.6 Links ...... 8 wards to hearing your comments on this issue. Jonathan Webley 7 The Hound Answers 8 [email protected] 8 Contributions 8

UK-TUG Committee 2009 2 Baskerville Survey ˆ Jonathan Fine (Chair) ˆ David Crossland (Secretary) The committee of UK-TUG recently undertook a small online survey with regard to the preferred ˆ David Saunders (Treasurer) format for Baskerville. There were 34 responses ˆ Joseph Wright (Membership Secretary and and almost 90% of respondents would prefer to see Webmaster) Baskerville in A4 format. Just over half want a ˆ John Trapp (Training Officer) printed copy. ˆ Jonathan Underwood There were several favourable comments regard- ing the return of Baskerville. Members of UK-TUG ˆ Charles Goldie are looking for news about UK-TUG and TUG. ˆ Simon Dales They also want technical articles on various top- ˆ Jonathan Webley (Baskerville Editor, co- ics relating to TEX and friends, such as on LATEX opted) packages and “how to” articles. These requests correspond with our vision for The committee can be contacted at: Baskerville and hopefully we can meet the high [email protected] standards set by previous editors.

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3 Events 3.3 Mathematics and Fiction 3.1 BachoT X 2009 The British Society for the E History of Mathematics is The Polish TEX Users Group, hosting a workshop on the GUST, have been holding an relationship between mathematics and fiction on 30 annual international TEX con- and 31 May 2009 at Rewley House, Oxford. The ference since 1993. These con- workshop will include readings and interviews with ferences aim to popularize TEX, METAFONT and writers, talks about the uses of mathematics in fic- other TEX related software as well as typography tion, and opportunities for discussion and debate. in general. One of the contributors is Donald Knuth, the cre- The XVIIth Conference, BachoTEX 2009, was ator of TEX. He is Professor Emeritus of the Art held at the traditional TEXies’ and GUST meeting of Computer Programming at Stanford University place, Bachotek near Brodnica, in the north-east of and author of the seminal multi-volume work “The Poland, from 29 April until 3 May 2009 inclusive. Art of Computer Programming”. Knuth will be The GUST AGM was held during the conference. talking about his novel “Surreal Numbers”, pub- The conference aimed to get a glimpse of the fu- lished in 1974 and still available on Amazon. ture, and the title was: The workshop is organised by

“TEX: at a turning point, or at the crossroads?” ˆ Tony Mann ([email protected]) Boguslaw Jackowski is chairman of the Program ˆ Noel-Ann Bradshaw ([email protected]) Committee which can be contacted at: [email protected] ˆ Raymond Flood ([email protected]) The conference website is: www.gust.org.pl/BachoTeX/2009 Further details of the workshop can be found at: www.bshm.org/meetings/Fiction.html 3.2 Call for TEX Pearls GUST, the organisers of BachoTEX, is seeking to 3.4 EuroTEX 2009 continue the tradition of “The Pearls of T X Pro- E EuroT X 2009 takes place this year gramming”. Briefly, Pearls are E in the Hague, the Netherlands, on 31 ˆ short and generic TEX, METAFONT or META- August through 4 September 2009, POST macros and the conference will focus on educational uses of T X, such as manuals, presentations and teaching ˆ code snippets that are easy to explain and E materials. The conference will be in English. preferably not obvious The fee for UK-TUG members is e350, which in- ˆ sometimes obscure oddities, exhibiting weird cludes everything except the excursion day (which TEX behaviour – dirty and risky tricks and costs e75). In particular it includes accommoda- traps are also welcome tion and meals. The official website is: ˆ not necessarily useful or serious Pearls are collected throughout the year by Pawel www.ntg.nl/EuroTeX2009 Jackowski, contact: [email protected] 3.5 TUG 2009 Further details, and the collection of pearls, can TUG 2009 will take place in Notre be found at: Dame, Indiana, from 28 to 31 July. This three-day conference focuses on www.gust.org.pl/projects/pearls practical techniques for document

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production using LATEX, TEX, ConTeXt, METAPOST 4 The Hound and friends. For the registration form, maps, the proposals Jonathan Webley already accepted, and more see: This is a somewhat easy, cryptic crossword and the tug.org/tug2009 solution can be found at the end of this issue.

April had several deadlines related to the confer- 1 2 3 4 5 ence:

ˆ 13 April 2009: This is the deadline for abstract 6 7 submissions; the call for papers is at:

tug.org/tug2009/cfp.html 8 Although proposals may be accepted after the 9 10 deadline, of course potential attendees would like to know what they’ll be seeing. So if you’d 11 12 like to give a talk, please try to submit an ab- stract by the 13th.

ˆ 17 April 2009: This is the deadline for bursary 13 14 applications; for information and the applica- tion form see:

tug.org/bursary Across 1 In Africa, see a container. (4) No late applications will be accepted. 3 These tools are a product of bad laws. (4) ˆ 27 April 2009: This is the deadline for the early 6 Misuse this girl. (3) bird registration discount. After this date, the 7 These weeds for veg. (5) registration fee will be increased. Register for 8 On this ship, the wicked queen mates. (7) the conference through Notre Dame’s website via this link: 11 Pawnbroker is unclean, almost. (5) 12 Mineral found in store? (3) tug.org/tug2009/register.html 13 Poor deals are without a toboggan. (4) 14 Idea came from me, twice. (4) 3.6 UKUUG Summer Conference 2009 Down UKUUG is the UK’s Unix and 1 In the discus, perhaps, achieve one’s Open Systems User Group. peak. (4) Their summer conference will 2 It’s a sight, the centilitres in awful cat’s be from Friday 7 August to pee. (9) Sunday 9 August 2009, at the Birmingham Con- 4 Beg and owe with one, sadly together we servatoire (School of Music) near the city centre. For further details see: looked dismal. (9) 5 Kent’s editor knows the issue. (4) ukuug.org/events/summer2009 7 Hades loses a ghost. (5) One of the streams will be a half day training ses- 9 These insects cause errors. (4) sion on TEX and typesetting. 10 Sounds like I hear when present. (4)

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5 Currency Symbols in LATEX and the first letter of the word Europe, crossed by two parallel lines to ‘certify’ Jonathan Webley the stability of the euro.” An approximation to the euro symbol can be created on a typewriter by typing a capital “C”, 5.1 The Dollar and the Pound backspacing and overstriking it with the equal Standard keyboards contain the dollar sign ($), (“=”) sign. which, of course, is a special symbol in TEX, so On many computers the euro symbol can be ob- needs to be prefaced with a backslash or oblique: tained with the ++e keystrokes. \$. This symbol works properly in both text mode In LATEX the euro has its own package, eurosym, and math mode. which contains these commands: Keyboards also have a pound sign (£), the use of which requires the package inputenc. Addition- Symbol LATEX ally, there is a standard command \pounds, which AC \geneuro £ renders as . This command works properly in BC \geneuronarrow both text mode and math mode. C \geneurowide Additionally, standard LATEX contains two com- e \officialeuro mands for these signs: \textdollar which renders as $, and All of these symbols are generated using the “C” \textsterling which renders as £. character of the current body font. The package also contains the command \euro which maps to 5.2 The Euro \officialeuro but can be altered using a package option. The European Commission specified a euro logo with exact proportions and colours. Whilst the Commission intended the logo to be a prescribed 5.3 And the rest of the World glyph shape, many font designers created their own The textcomp package includes these symbols: variants.

Symbol LATEX Figure 1: Construction of the euro symbol Name Used in š \textbaht baht Thailand (THB) ¢ \textcent cent US, Canada ‹ \textcentoldstyle cent, old style  \textcolonmonetary col´on Costa Rica (CRC), El Salvador (SVC), cedi Ghana (GHS) ¤ \textcurrency generic currency sign, it is According to the European Commission: a character used to denote a currency when the symbol “Inspiration for the e symbol itself came for that currency is unavail- from the Greek epsilon () – a reference able to the cradle of European civilisation –

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Symbol LATEX Symbol LATEX Name Used in Use

Š \textdollaroldstyle d \EURcr escudo1 formerly Portugal (PTE), euro compatible with Cape Verde (CVE) Courier \EURdig – \textdong D euro compatible with dong Vietnam (VND) marvosym digits ¿ \ texteuro c \EURhv euro Eurozone (EUR) euro compatible with Hel- Œ \textflorin vetica florin Aruba (AWG), e \EURtm or guilder Netherlands Antilles (ANG) euro compatible with Times Roman  \textguarani ¦ \EyesDollar guarani Paraguay (PYG) 3 ¡ \Shilling ’ \textlira lira formerly Italy (ITL) and In conclusion, LATEX caters for all common, and others some not so common, currency symbols. Unicode, however, has a few additional ones, and is far better  \textnaira documented. naira Nigeria (NGN) ‘ \textpeso peso Philippines (PHP) 6 Wikibooks Ž \textwon Jonathan Webley won South Korea (KRW), North Korea (KPW) ¥ \textyen 6.1 Wikis yen Japan (JPY) Wikis are the backbone of Web 2.0 – collaborative yuan China (CNY) websites with dynamic, user-driven content. The Wikimedia Foundation hosts many wiki The mathdesign package redefines \texteuro to projects in many languages using its MediaWiki be compatible with these fonts: Utopia, Charter or application. These wikis all have the same, sim- Garamond. ple ethos – information is free. Notoriously, any And then there is the marvosym package which anonymous amateur can contribute and there is no has these symbols: guarantee that information is either correct, com- plete or legal. But surprisingly the concept works and the flag- Symbol LATEX ship project, Wikipedia, is a huge success. There Use are many editors making small contributions and 2 a few who spend hours and hours editing. Minor ¢ \Denarius obsolete symbol for the errors are easily fixed, articles are continually kept German pfennig 2The denarius was a Roman coin. The dinar is a descen- e \EUR dant of the denarius and is used, or was formerly used, by several countries. However, Serbia, for example, uses the Cyrillic De (D) letter for the dinar. 1This version of the dollar sign with two vertical lines is 3This symbol resembles a beta (β) but I believe it to be called the cifr˜ao. Amounts are generally written so that it more akin to the German Eszett (ß). It is possibly a symbol serves as the decimal separator, such as 20Š00 for 20 escudos. for the schilling, the pre-euro currency of Austria.

-6- Volume 10, Number 1 up to date, and an army of volunteers check for \frac{\partial \mathbf{D}} {\partial t} vandalism and enforce standards. Copyright issues \end{align} are dealt with, facts are checked and malicious con- tributors blocked. Wikipedia has readable and use- And these appear as: ful articles covering many more topics and in more depth than any paper encyclopædia. ∇ · D = ρf ∇ · B = 0 A 6.2 LTEX and MediaWiki ∂B ∇ × E = − The MediaWiki software supports LATEX. It uses ∂t A ∂D a limited subset of AMS-LTEX generating either ∇ × H = J + PNG images or simple HTML mark-up, depend- f ∂t ing on user preferences and the complexity of the Equations are not automatically numbered, and expression. the align* environment is neither available nor re- quired.

6.3 Wikibooks Wikipedia has several sister projects and Wiki- books is one of the more useful of these. Whereas Wikipedia hosts many encyclopædic articles, Wiki- books hosts fewer, longer articles or books, with a more connected narrative and chapters that would normally be read in order. Each Wikibook aims to be a definitive reference work – though few achieve this. The Wikipedia article on LATEX is short and cov- ers only a few subjects such as the history of LATEX and licensing issues. But in Wikibooks, the LAT X In MediaWiki, LATEX commands are enclosed E within the tags $and$; there is a but- book has over 30 chapters (or pages) and appen- ton to insert these into the edit box. So a simple dices. Some of these are substantial and consid- equation, such as Euler’s formula, would be entered ered “complete”, others are bare stubs. The chap- as ters cover various subjects including tables, graph- ics, indexing and maths environments. There is a $e^\{i\backslash pi\}\; +\; 1\; =\; 0$ small index and a glossary and contains material both for the beginner and the expert. Wikipedia And should appear on screen as: concentrates on the why and Wikibooks on the how. Other sister projects include Wiktionary, a dic- eiπ + 1 = 0 tionary, which ultimately aims to define all words in Maxwell’s equations provide an example requir- all languages. Wikiversity is a “university”, which ing aligned equations, and are entered as: aims to have learning resources such as courses and tests, but has only a limited amount of material on

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books have an exceptionally high quality, lots of In conclusion, the LATEX Wikibook is a reason- content and are well-formatted. LATEX was nom- ably good online resource, and one that can only inated in April 2007, garnered seven supporting get better, especially with our support. votes and achieved featured status in May 2007. 6.6 Links

LATEX Wikibook: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX

TEX Wikibook: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/TeX

TEX for the Impatient Wikibook: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/TeX for the Impatient

Wikibooks guide to reviewing pages: en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Using Wikibooks/ Reviewing Pages

Wikpedia article on LATEX: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LaTeX The LAT X book is listed as the 4th most popular E Wikipedia help on displaying formulæ: Wikibook. Books are ranked by their most popu- en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ lar page, which for LAT X is the front page – the E Help:Displaying a formula contents page. This page averaged over 1000 hits per day over a sample period in 2008. Several other pages (or chapters) from this book also made it into 7 The Hound Answers the top 20.

Wikibooks, unlike most other wiki projects, has Across

this year introduced reviewed pages. Reviewing as- meme 14. sled, 13. ore, 12. uncle, 11. steamer, 8. sesses pages with regard to readability, accuracy swede, 7. Sue, 6. awls, 3. case, 1. and depth. A reviewed page is considered to be

a stable version of that page. Reviewing can only Down

be carried out by “editors”. Editor status is au- here 10. bugs, 9. shade, 7. seed, 5. woebegone, 4. tomatically granted to contributors who have met spectacle, 2. cusp, 1. various criteria such as having made sufficient ed- its and having a confirmed email address. All pages need to be reviewed, and re-reviewed if changed. In 8 Contributions the LATEX Wikibook many pages still require to be reviewed. All contributions to Baskerville should be sent to the editor at:

6.5 Conclusion [email protected] All wiki content must be seen as a work-in-progress. Articles on any area of TEXor its friends, UK- If you don’t like it – you can fix it, improve it TUG or related topics are very welcome. The Com- mittee is particularly keen to publish articles with or start again from scratch. The LATEX Wikibook has several small chapters which need to be ex- a UK flavour. Send in your comments on this is- panded; other chapters need to be enhanced, and sue; your suggestions, letters, thoughts, tips and more chapters could easily be added. There are hints, articles, jokes, questions, requests for help, also two very short and incomplete Wikibooks on jobs, cartoons or puzzles – anything relevant will be considered for publication. TEX.

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