
\article{Nordic \TeX}
There has been a \TeX\ `grouping' in the Nordic countries
(here taken to include Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark,
and perhaps Iceland), for some years now. Last year they
formed a committee which guided this year's gathering.
From outside we have an impression of `northern Europe'
as a rather homogeneous grouping, with similar customs,
languages, aspirations and approaches to the world. This
view is based largely on our ignorance. The language
problem alone is sufficient that most of the meeting's
participants found it easier to speak in English than to
try to cope with the strange accents and vocabulary of
their regional neighbours. It is probably the case that
languages which are `similar' are more difficult to
understand than those which are obviously dissimilar --
just as it is often easier to handle an entirely different
operating system than one which differs in only
a few key ways. Nor are the \TeX\slash \LaTeX\ problems
necessarily similar.

The burning issue to the Swedes is the national character
problem. Although Knuth made a change between \TeX78 and
\TeX82 to make \AA\ a character rather than an accented A
-- \*A -- (in passing, mistakenly removing the circle
accent, which is needed in other European languages
anyway), this new symbol is not to the liking of the
Swedes -- a fuller exposition of these problems is given
in the first European \TeX\ Conference Proceedings. In
fact, the whole problem of national characters is one
which goes much further. Keyboards look strange: they look
strange because the often don't have those useful
characters |\|, |[|, |]|, |{| and |}|, to mention the most
interesting. These are replaced (at least in Sweden), by
some of the `national' characters. A solution used in
Swe\TeX\ is to replace |\{}| by |/<>|. At least this makes
typing a bit more straightforward, but it makes document
interchange rather more difficult than it should be (and
it still does not solve the \LaTeX\ optional parameter
problem). Of course, these problems are not unique to
Sweden.

And of course, hyphenation remains its usual problem,
first to generate and use the appropriate patterns, and
then to allow hyphenation after accented characters
(remember that to a Swede, Dane or Norwegian, \AA\ is not
an accented character, but the last letter of the
alphabet.

The meeting took place at KTH (Royal Institute of
Technology) in Stockholm on June 12th. About 35--40
people attended, mainly from Sweden, but with a fair
number of representatives from Finland, Denmark and
Norway. There were some from the publishing and
commercial world as well as the academic\slash research
world.

Niels Mortensen of Ris\o, the Danish national laboratory,
and currently the President of the Nordic \TeX\ committee
started off the day with a description of \TeX\ use at
Ris\o, a follow-up to his talk last year. \TeX\ has been
identified as a `strategic product' by Ris\o, partly at
least on account of its mathematical typography. One
department uses only \TeX. He had brought with
him the {\sl European Wind Atlas}, a 700 page A4 format
book, the manuscript of which had been prepared in
\LaTeX, and which would not have been possible to create
without \LaTeX. Niels also identified some actual
and potential problems and non-problems: 
\bi more powerful machines were needed (currently the
laboratory uses pcs, but 386 machines would give them the
power needed);
\bi hyphenation was not a key problem, since the main
language used was English;
\bi document styles reflecting European standards were
needed (e.g.~A4 and translation of \LaTeX\ `Table of
Contents' etc.\ into Danish\dots);
\bi conversion from other (word-processing) systems --
not a real problem since it never happens;
\bi choice of fonts to reflect current house style;
\bi better manuals and training were needed;
\bi centralised \TeX\ support required;
\bi need photosetting now!

\noindent
Many will recognise these as common problem areas. The
photosetting one is particularly galling at Ris\o\ since
they purchased an IBX machine from Chelgraph, partly on
the understanding that a {\tt dvi} to ACE driver would
become commercially available. Sadly this has not
happened.

I talked a bit next about the other European \TeX\ groups
and TUG. This developed into my by now standard
harangue\slash pep talk. The only bit I can recall is
saying that `because something came for free it didn't
mean you weren't going to pay for it'. I may develop this
theme elsewhere.

Staffan Romberger of KTH discussed the problems of the
Nordic national letters outlined in the
introduction to this article. Staffan noted that on
average there would be one unacceptable hyphenation per
page using \TeX's standard hyphenation. Jan Michael
Rynning, also of KTH, complemented Staffan's talk by
presenting the draft of a proposal to this year's TUG
meeting. In effect it is a list of `what the Nordic users
consider important in the standardisation and future
development of \TeX'. The proposals will be circulated
widely in the period up to the TUG conference, especially
to other European groups who share similar problems of
national characters, hyphenation and national words in
macro packages.

Per Harald Jacobsen of the University of Oslo (UiO) gave
a brief introduction to the use of \TeX\ at UiO.
Basically they used Michael Ferguson's ML (MultiLingual)
\TeX, which helped solve many of the problems outlined by
Staffan and Jan Michael (but which is not in the public
domain), and Norwegian hyphenation patterns. They 
also had some Icelandic characters available. He noted a
migration to Unix on the campus. The University had a
Linotronic with a RIP3 (the latest raster image processor
from Linotype), as well as the \PS\ based LPS40 laser
printer. They had produced a number of local guides to
the \TeX\ and \LaTeX\ system available. He also noted
participation in various projects involving `standards'
like SGML, ODA and \PS. And he mentioned {\sl
Mathematica}. This amazing piece of software has not yet
made its way into \TeXline, but it ought to. Besides
having the potential to revolutionise the way mathematics
is taught (and understood), it can generate \TeX. Bruce
Wolman of \TeX\kern-0.1em cel in Norway maintains that {\sl
Mathematica} helps to sell \TeX. I can believe it.

Anders Eriksson (again of KTH) discussed some tools which
had been developed to allow graphics from AutoCad, Lotus,
Quattro and Excel to be imported into \LaTeX\ documents.
Essentially this takes an HPGL plot file (which almost
every piece of graphics software will produce somehow),
and converts it to a form which can be used by \TeX. It
is device dependent (the device being an HP Laser Jet I
guess), but at least the conversion software, ACAD-\TeX\
is available on request. It is written in T-Basic.

Miro Sedla\v cek (KTH again) discussed some of the
problems he had encountered placing pictures in
\TeXtures, one of the \TeX\ implementations on the Mac.
Some of the problems were associated with the different
resolutions employed by different pieces of Mac software.
Those using PICT format (including MacDraw, Canvas
and MacDraft) work at 72\,dpi (the screen resolution).
When printed at 300\,dpi on a laser printer, these pictures
often look rather unsatisfactory. Similarly most of the
paint programs use pixels which use the Mac's screen
resolution. He had also done some work with graphics
generated through Illustrator and Cricket Draw which
allow Encapsulated \PS\ ({\sc epsf}) to be created.
Incorporating {\sc epsf} avoids the problems of
resolution. Using Illustrator has the additional advantage
that it is possible to save the preview image, so that the
perennial \PS\ problem of not being able to see the
drawing is minimised. Miro had developed a number of macros
to make the inclusion of the graphics somewhat easier.

Peter Busk Laursen of UNI$\bullet$C (Danmarks EDB-Center
for Forskning og Uddannelse) described their
phototypesetting service. This must be one of the cheapest
around, and uses an LN300. They have developed some tools
to make the use of \LaTeX\ easier with the \PS\ fonts.
Peter had brought with him {\sl \LaTeXsl\ p\aa\ dansk} by
Steen Larsen (an introduction to \LaTeX), which had been
produced on their system, using a mixture of New Century
Schoolbook and Computer Modern. (Peter did describe New
Century Schoolbook as `bombastic', but presumably not in
this context.) This typesetting service is open to all.

\PS\ entered the fray again, with another brief
contribution from Jan Michael Rynning. One of the ways
that KTH had employed to enhance resolution was the
`print-at-magnification, photoreduce-to-true-size' --
effectively allowing an A5 size page at the equivalent of
about 420\,dpi. He also discussed the differences between
`write white' and `write black' laser printer engines,
noting too the need to tweak the \MF\ parameters in order
to obtain good characters on the page whenever a new
laser printer appeared. The difference between the old,
CX-engine Apple LaserWriter and the new CS-engine
LaserWriter II had already been mentioned. The new
machine has bigger dots, which enables it to fill black
areas rather better (but has all sorts of other, less
desirable consequences). Staffan Romberger gave a quick
demonstration of \TeXtures\ on the Mac, and managed to
find a use for a pc (to prop up the Mac).

Timo Suhonen of the University of Jyv\"askyl\"a\ in
Finland gave a brief account of the history of \TeX\ use
there. They have progressed from \TeX78 on a Univac 100
(in 1983), through to \TeX\ on Sun4 and Sun3
workstations, The Publisher, pc\TeX, \TeXtures\ and
MultiLingual \TeX. He also brought with him some local
documentation (mainly in Finnish), covering the use of
\LaTeX, \AmSTeX\ and |plain|\TeX. 


 Various people in the audience were then invited to
give a `site report' -- essentially to fly some flags.
This ranged from the local departmental secretary, who
uses \TeX, to Martti Nikunen from Helsinki (secretary of
the \TeX\ committee of Euromath) who had
brought a bag of public domain goodies with him to
distribute -- Oz\TeX, Wayne Sullivan's \TeX\ and previewer,
James Clark's |dvitops|, and RUMDJET. RUMDJET is a
modification of one of Nelson Beebe's drivers for the HP
ink jet printer: it gives  good quality images. And it
also drives the HP LaserJet. A bargain.  Bo Thid\'e from
the far north described some of the things going on beyond
the Arctic Circle (at Sweden's Space Research Centre). He
is running one of the humungous \TeX s (sometimes also
referred to as {\it gros} or {\it gross}\TeX) on an HP-UX
system, and is starting to look at exploiting the
architecture of that machine more. He pointed out that
Unix systems now had `National Language Support', meaning
that you could indeed use the local keyboards without too
much pain -- this should be looked at more closely.
Curiously I noted Bo's name again, a few days later in
\TeXhax. \PiCTeX, a well known eater of \TeX\ memory runs
better on large versions of \TeX\ -- the ones which are
usually written in C, and use 32 bit addressing. Even
then, Bo had still managed to get the `I have run out of
memory' message.

The remainder of the meeting was used to discuss ways of
fostering information exchange within the Nordic group.
The most obvious item for me (as TUG European
coordinator) was the relatively low level of coordination
in the group. Various projects were underway which took
little account of what other people were doing, or had
done. People were still solving problems which had, in
essence, been solved five years or so ago. It is only
recently that the group's countries have had an effective
electronic network (although many places are adequately
connected on a wider scale). And the high cost of travel
within and between the countries does discourage
meetings. In fact, there was one half-serious suggestion
to have the next meeting in the UK, since it would
probably be cheaper (however the more
level-headed consensus favoured the Canaries). The group
continues, with Niels retaining the coveted role of
President, and some minor changes to the rest of the
committee -- maintaining the correct balance. Next year's
meeting will be held in Oslo.

Throughout this account one person's name has been
conspicuously absent -- the organiser: Roswitha Graham of
KTH had created this meeting, and had arranged all the
interminable bits and pieces which go with it --
speakers, accommodation, meals, hospitality, weather,
hardware, welcome: absolutely everything. Without her
unremitting zeal, enthusiasm and attention to details large
and small, there would have been little cohesion and
likely, no meeting.
\author{Malcolm Clark}

