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\article{Nederlandse \TeX\ Gebruikergroep}
The Dutch \TeX\ Group (NTG) organised a two day meeting
at the University of Utrecht on June 29th--30th. The
first day of the meeting was given over to courses: one
`an Introduction to \LaTeX' given by J R Luyten \&amp; Kees
van der Laan (Groningen): the other was on `\LaTeX\ style
files' and was presented by Nico Poppelier (Utrecht). I
did not attend this preliminary day, partly because of time
constraints, partly to maintain solidarity with BR's
employees, and partly because I couldn't face a day of
\LaTeX\ in Dutch. Perhaps in 1992 I will speack all EC
languages (and \LaTeX) fluently.

The Dutch have a very laid back approach to meetings, and
this was a very relaxed program. 12 presentations were
given in the day, between 10.00\,am and 4.00\,pm, with a
gap of two hours at lunchtime. How do you achieve this,
and still have some time to give the talks? -- parallel
sessions (did I mention the two coffee breaks as well?).
This did ensure that everyone had a chance to chatter
informally, and the early finish allowed the participants
to be home before dark. (As the Dutch keep telling you
`ours is only a small country\dots'). As usual with
parallel sessions, the most interesting looking talks are
always scheduled together.

The very first session was a general one, not held in
parallel, but contained two talks: the first was from
Kees van der Laan, who is the current NTG
chairman. He outlined the last year's activities of NTG,
covering its formation, its achievements and its plans
for the future. Perhaps the most interesting parts for
me, because it fits in with other `European' trends are
the cooperation with other groups (like \sgml\ users),
the listserver\slash fileserver which has been
established, the `customisation' of \LaTeX\ style files
for Dutch requirements, and the desire to share
information with others. Added to this the group has
started to evaluate \TeX-relevant software.

The second talk was me in my TUG European coordinator's
role. This is the usual polemic\slash harangue of `what
is out there', `join TUG', `contribute to \TUGboat',
`participate', `wonderful to be here', followed by a
quick foray into `standards'.

After coffee the first parallel session began, with a
choice between `DTP versus \TeX' (Ad Emmen, SARA),
`From \sgml\ to \TeX\ and back again' (Jos Warner, Vrije
Universiteit, Amsterdam), and `a Demonstration of
Amiga\TeX\ together with {\sc arexx}' (Lex Fransen,
Utrecht). I went to Jos Warner's presentation on
\sgml/\TeX, since I already knew a little of the VU's 
work on an \sgml\ parser. An article on this will be
published sometime in EP-{\sc odd}. One of the suggestions
made in the course of the presentation was that the
\LaTeX\ style files are, in a sense, Document Type
Definitions (DTDs). While this is noy wholly true, it
could be, and it might be a useful path to pursue, one
which could make \sgml\ much more approachable.
Essentially \TeX\ means \LaTeX\ in this context. Trying to
massage raw \TeX\ into \sgml\ would indeed be a challenge.
Even then I am not too snaguine about the
\LaTeX$\to$\sgml\ routeway, although clearly this could be
a most useful path for data capture.

Lunch was an opportunity to talk \TeX\ to \TeX ies. Have
you noticed how apparently normal people become
illuminated when they start babbling \TeX? 

The first of the afternoon sessions were `Transparencies
using \LaTeX' (Kees van der Laan), `\TeX\ for manuals' (A
J van der Groot, Groningen) and `TeX's hypehnation
algorithm and the problems with Dutch' (F D C Kuiken). I
atended the hyphenation talk. This was an exposition of
how \TeX's hyphenation works, drawn partly from the
existing literature -- it was however useful to draw this
togther into one place and to bring in the various \TeX\
parameters which are available for adjustment. I admit I
had forgotten that there may only be 307 entries in
|\hyphenation|,. Some macros were introduced to to allow
for the way Dutch words divide (requiring the use of
|\discretionary|, and a neat dodge which allows an
already accented word to be hyphenated after the accent.
Normally \TeX\ will not hyphenate words after an accent,
but it can be coerced into doing so, by pretending that
the part after the diacritical is a word in its own
right. Clearly this is not perfect, but it helps. Kuiken
has actually written his own hyphenation scheme, which
improves over the technique employed by Liang in \TeX,
but he was unable to say much about this.

The next session was a choice between `a short
introduction to \MF\ (Walter Jaffe, Leiden) and
`Simpel\TeX' (Andreas Lenstra, Nijmegan). Walter Jaffe has
produced a Hebrew character set. But I went to hear
Andreas Lenstra: partly  because he was talking
\TeX, not \LaTeX. In essence he has a set of
straightforward macros which are reasonably modular and
yet powerful enough for many tasks, with the prospect of
development without the need to tread very carefully.

The last session was a choice between `Pie charts' (Kees
van der Laan) and `WorkGroup 13' (Victor Eijkhout).
WorkGroup 13 (or WG13) is NTG's working group tackling
specifically Dutch problems. This covers hyphenation,
through to the customisation of \LaTeX\ style files, and
also the creation of new appropriate style files. This is
the one I attended.

Victor noted that a dictionary of 50,000 words had
generated 4,500 patterns for \TeX, and gave a claimed
89\% `accuracy' -- for US-English; in the Netherlands, a
dictionary of 350,000 words had generated 8,000 patterns
and gave a remarkable 99.5\% `accuracy'. On the other
hand, 8,000 patterns is too large for standard {\sc
ini{\TeX}}.

WG13 had paid heed to Lamport's oft-repeated maxim that
styles need designers, and have worked extensively with a
designer on the modification and and creation of \LaTeX\
styles. One modification of `table of contents', to
eliminate the line of dots and have the page number
reference follow the chapter\slash section title, leaving
about a quad of space  met with a mixed response.

Victor also noted that `designers' and typographers
seldom agree on just what the line measure should be: for
example

\centerline{\vbox{%
\halign{\hfil#\quad&amp;\hfil#&amp;\ #\hfil\cr
\strut guru &amp; \multispan2\hfil measure \hfil\cr
Morison &amp; 10--12&amp;words\cr
Karl Treebus &amp; 10--12&amp;words\cr
      &amp; 60--70&amp;letters\cr
John Miles &amp; 60--65&amp;characters\cr
Leslie Lamport &amp; 575&amp;tokens\cr
Linotype &amp; 7--10&amp;words\cr
      &amp; 50--65&amp;letters\cr}
}}

\noindent Of course some of the variability is due to
factors like typeface and leading.

Naturally the A4 paper size was part of the `Euro-style'.
\LaTeX\ customisation was necessary too. But perhaps the
most interesting feature was the creation of new styles to
reflect regional typographic expectations.

To summarise -- a meeting worth attending, since it
demonstrated the vigour and determination of yet another
group of \TeX ies. There was no overall theme to the
meeting, perhaps a reflection in part of its youth.
Nevertheless the many active work groups should soon
provide much potential for more specialist meetings, if
that is what the NTG desire. A general meeting like this
ensures that there is something for everyone. Again the
pre-emminence of \LaTeX\ is noticeable, and the European
themes of hyphenation and style file customisation. The
national character problems of groups to the north, east
and south are less acute here. A good, smooth meeting,
with great promise for the future. Much of the credit for
the success of the meeting must go to the NTG's board,
and in particular to the irrepresible Kees van der Laan.
\author{Malcolm Clark}




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