Activities schedule

Important program orientation points and headlines of conference days

The presentations have not yet been assigned to particular days; however, the list of presentations is already available.

Please note especially the following:

• The TeX Clinic will be active throughout the conference,
• there will be opportunities to present  poster sessions,
• typography counsel - an opportunity to consult your designs with Andrzej Tomaszewski,  Adam Twardoch and Tomasz Bierkowski (graphic designer, Academy of Fine Arts of Katowice)
  
• a special appearance by Stephen Hicks on misusing TeX to… (see the Sunday program)
• BoF sessions
• tutorials and workshops

• take your small works  (or excerpts/samples from bigger ones)
• post them on the available boards
• talk about them with those attracted
• Thursday is the day

• if you have an idea or a glimpse of it, i.e., a feather of a high fliyng birdie—
• you can post it on the announcement board
• meet with those who subscribe and
  
• work on the idea, i.e., get that birdie
• afterwords you might want to announce the outcome
  

About the typography counsel:

• bring books or other works with typographic elements (not only of your design)
• we will add them to that small collective exhibition
• our befirended typographers led by Andrzej Tomaszewski will analyze and comment on them, giving invaluable advice
• Saturday is the day  

• a workshop on MetaPost for lazy beginners by Adam Kolany (it is advisable to get yourself a laptop with a wireless card and PuTTY installed plus, of course, a working TeX Live installation; Linux is preferred but Windows users should also be able to follow):

Day 1, meeting 1, 2*45 mins:

• basic graphic commands – operations draw, fill, drawarrow, drawdblarrow;
• path operators “ -- ” and “ .. ”; finding a point of lines intersection; pseudo-variable whatever;
• changing the shape and size of a pen; changing the color of stroking and filling;
• conditional change of a colour – conditions (command if … else: … fi); type color;
• dashed lines – modifier dashed; function dashpattern;
• application exercise: illustrating the angle bisector theorem.

Day 2, meeting 2, 2*45 mins:

• operations on paths – function reverse; transformations – reflections, rotations, affine transformations;
• type pair – functions xpart, ypart; variables x[] i y[];
• points and nodes of a curve – functions length p, point t of p;
• control nodes – operators precontrol t of p, postcontrol t of p;
• changing the direction of a curve at a node;
• application exercise: drawing a heart for collecting charity money.

Day 3, meeting 3, 2*45 mins:

• loops – drawing function diagrams;
• labelling characteristic points – function thelabel; procedure dotlabel; preprocessor tags btex … etex, verbatimtex … etex, etc.;
• type picture, variable currentpicture, constant nullpicture;
• definitions – commands def, vardef, begingroup … endgroup, save;
• application exercise: drawing regular polygons and various charts (line, bar, pie).

Day 4, meeting 4 (if the tutorial begins on Wednesday), 2*45 mins:

• intersection curves – functions p1 intersectionpoint p2, buildcycle(p1,…,pn), intersectiontimes;
• fragments of curves – functions cutbefore, cutafter, subpath;
• clipping with a contour – function clip pc to p;
• application exercise: using paths, color tables, etc. for representing graphs, grids and other graphic structures from Dorotka's examples.

• Norbert Preining's workshop on maintaining a TeX Live installation with TeX Live Manager, a new thing in TL2008; participants migh get more from the tutorial by commanding a laptop with a TL installation and and wireless card

• a  LaTeX workshop with an ad hoc program by Grzegorz Murzynowski; Grzegorz is ready to take problems from the audience

Wednesday: What's new with and around TeX

10:00 AM Conference opening and presetations start

The the current state of TeX engines and TeX related software will be presented so as to introduce the afternoon-evening panel discussion. Highlighted here are the presentations by Hans Hagen and Taco Hoekwater on progress in LuaTeX and the mplib library.

Afternoon-evening panel discussion:

Subject:

TeX: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats (i.e., SWOT analysis)

Leader:

Andrzej Odyniec

Thursday: Working day

• workshops and tutorials (the tutorial list will be published soon)
• the TeX Clinic
• informal meetings
• the Typoghrapy Counsel
• BoF sessions
• poster sessions

8:00 PM The GUST Annual General Meeting

Friday: Font day

The program will sport — among others — the following speakers:

• Hans Hagen
• Bogusław Jackowski
• Janusz M. Nowacki
• Piotr Strzelczyk
• Ulrik Vieth

Afternoon-evening panel discussion:

Subject:

TeX distributions

Leader:

Norbert Preining

Bonfire: bring your voices, musical instruments, good moods, and willingness. And do whatever possible to secure a good weather.

Saturday:

Typography day

The program will bring — among others — the presentations by:

• Małgorzata Dubowiak
• Andrzej Tomaszewski
• Adam Twardoch

Afternoon-evening panel discussion:

Subject:

TeX: at a turning point, or at the crossroads?

Leader:

Marek Ryćko

Sunday: TeX companion programs day

This year's TeX Pearls presented by Taco Hoekwater with a special appearance by Stephen Hicks, receiver of the Judges' Prize at the Eleventh ICFP Programming Contest, on “misusing” TeX… to program a Mars rover, functional style.