<html><head><meta name="color-scheme" content="light dark"></head><body><pre style="word-wrap: break-word; white-space: pre-wrap;">\message{strange multicolumn error in this section}
\message{just prod return in response to un/extra group}
%plain tex document
%\catcode`\@=11
% Macros
\let \em \sl % \em is logically distinct from \it, so may need to
             % change this
\def\jLaTeX{{\rm \lower.7ex\hbox{J}\kern-.125em\LaTeX}}

 
\def\jTeX{{\rm \lower.7ex\hbox{J}\kern-.1667em
              T\kern-.1667em\lower.7ex\hbox{E}\kern-.125emX}}
 
\let\AMSTeX\AmSTeX 
\def\AMSLaTeX{{\cal A}\kern-.1667em\lower.5ex\hbox
 {\cal M}\kern-.125em{\cal S}\LaTeX}
 
\let\METAFONT\MF
 
\let \mffnt \relax  % needs attention
 
% NOT done "itemize environment"
 
 
\centerline{\bf Pictures of the floating world}\smallskip\noindent
A sticky day in Tokyo, lunch at {\em Tony Roma's Ribs\/} (at least it wasn't
McDonald's) -- and there I was, at an IBM establishment just outside The
Emperor's back-gate, apologising to  a
meeting of jTUG (The Japanese \TeX\ Users Group)
for my not being Ray
Gaucher: this was to excuse my inability to give my talk in Japanese.
My excuse for not producing my OHP slides in
their language was more plausible: no access to \jLaTeX!
 
The speaker's rostrum, on the audience's side, announced in Big
Friendly Letters the single command `THINK' -- but despite this
I was about half way through my talk, entitled
% Japanese insert here
\vskip 18pt
\noindent
(which, being translated, should be roughly: {\em Recent developments
in \TeX\ from a European
viewpoint\/}),
before the irony suddenly struck me: here was I eloquently expounding the
advantages to `us Europeans (M Delors would have been proud of
me)' of 8-bit input to an audience who have been using 14-bit input
regularly for many years!
 (See the article on \jTeX\ by Yasuki Saito in  TUGboat \hbox{Volume
8} (1987), \hbox{No.\ 2} -- but note that
\jTeX\ has evolved considerably from the
system described in that article.)
 
They were very polite about it, laughing only when I intended to make a
joke: but one of the questions was `when will mainstream \TeX\ catch
up with our version?': `Another 10 years?' -- I ventured -- over to you, Don!
 
 
The audience of about 50 also had several serious talks to listen to.
 

\item{$\bullet$} First  a very
interesting talk on using \TeX\ to produce forms (a very important
activity in Japan!). This was given by Junichiro Tsuji and described
work done by him and two colleagues at Mitsubishi Electric
Corporation.
From it I learnt, inter alia, the following `Japanese phrases':
\hbox{\it stylo
filo\/} and {\it Postosclipto\/}; and saw a demonstration of a natty
device on the OHP which at the flick of a switch moved the plate up and
refocussed itself to produce a magnified image!
 
\item{} I have asked Junichiro
 to send me a copy of his macros: we decided that this could not be
done by \hbox{e-mail} as they contain definitions such as:
% float (may be whole page) of Japanese to go in here.
\vskip 20pt\goodbreak
 
\item{} I trust that this clearly specifies
the next challenge problem for the writers of
$\ast\ast$encode
programs!
 
\item{$\bullet$} Next a very long and detailed description of a system for
database publishing using \jTeX\ together with  various \unix\ tools.
One of the publications for which this has been used is `{\em Japanese
Entertainers, A Biographical Dictionary}' compiled by Nichigai
\hbox{Associates Ltd.} -- so when you are booking a Bunraku theatre
group for your next theme party, remember how the reference you will be
consulting was typeset!  Part of this talk was given in competition
with a broadcast over the office's loud-speaker system: I did not ask, but
assume that it was broadcasting exhortations such as `Work your
hardest and best for
the crew, right here at Big Blue' or announcing the winner of the latest
competition to write a Company Wakka (like a Haiku, but 31 syllables).
 
\item{$\bullet$} Finally there were reports on the \TeX as meeting: 
there were no
visual aids for this, thus all I can report is that the names `Nelson
Beebe', `Don Hosek' and `Frank M\dots' were mentioned,
flatteringly I assume!  This led on to the
business part of the meeting, at which point `I made my excuses and
left' -- in the direction of the nearest Sushi bar.

 
\section{Some truths revealed} 
Now I have to admit that my main reason for visiting Japan (apart from
the odd spot of geomorphological exploration) was as a
mathematician: to attend the International Congress of
Mathematicians in Kyoto.
I am sure that my present audience has no interest in the content of
the talks given there (I shall refrain from comment on whether they
should have!) so  I shall merely mention that one of the winners of a
{\em Fields Medal\/} (the nearest thing there is to a {\em Nobel Prize}
for mathematicians) hails from New Zealand and gave his talk to the
assembled thousands dressed
in {\em All Blacks} strip!
 
Thanks to the generous sponsorship of the {\em NeXT Computer Marketing
Division} of Canon Inc., TUG was represented at this congress: this
enabled me to meet \TeX\ users from over 40 countries in all
continents (however defined) except Antarctica (mind you, I should be
surprised if \TeX\ has not found its way there by now -- but not many
mathematicians have!).  To be more precise, I should say that some
were potential users, typified by a gentleman from Beijing who told
me: `My department has been sent \TeX\ for our PCs, please can you
tell me how to install and use it?'
 
The majority of the European users to whom I talked
did not know of the existence of their
language or national user groups, and one from Belgium was not at all
happy that all I could offer him was NTG or GUTenberg!
 
Several also mentioned the need for a Users Group in their country,
in particular a Nigerian who is intending to organise one (given the
population of the country, this is potentially a very large group).  He
is also interested in getting assistance with adapting \TeX\ to the
Hausa language (it uses Roman script plus a few characters with extra
hooks on): any \METAFONT er who wants to use there skills to useful
effect, please contact me and I shall put you in touch with him.
 
I also made some useful contacts with the Mathematica crew
(and through them with the Japanese Addison-Wesley editors).  In
contrast to the other publishers there (except, of course, the AMS),
most of whom either did not know that most of their output is typeset
in \TeX\ (to them it is simply {\em Camera Copy} but
well over 90\% of the books I looked at were in tell-tale
Computer Modern!) or
treated \TeX\ as a necessary evil (its
necessity is abundantly clear!), these guys were really enthusiastic about
typesetting in \TeX, and
proud to say that they used it for all their publications.
 
Then one
day Mr Mathematica himself turned up and told me, at great length,
how wonderful \TeX\
is, and how well it is integrated with his,
even more marvelous, program {\em but}, he added, \TeX\
would be so much better if only the changes he had suggested to Knuth had been 
incorporated 
 in  Version 3.0 (his problem is obviously
that he did not consult Roswitha!). However, he assured me
that Version 2.0 of Mathematica
would attempt to resolve these problems but that this may involve them
in writing their own typesetting language.  One thing he did state was
that this new version will be able to produce Encapsulated \PS\
Files containing \TeX-typeset text -- something that will be a great
boon to those of us who need mathematical annotation within \PS\
graphics.
He himself is at present writing a book typeset in Palatino 
 with, believe it or not, Lucida Maths Fonts! -- he
obviously has, as he put it, the right contacts at Adobe.
 
My contact in Japan, Yoshio Ohno, has (using \jLaTeX)
written a book covering \TeX,
\METAFONT, \LaTeX\ and \AMSTeX\ (including the j$\ast\ast$ versions)
in only 260 small-format pages! (I have a copy which anyone  interested
is welcome to inspect.) He told me that although \jLaTeX\ is widely
used, `there are probably less than six people in the country who can
produce style files': a statistic which appears to me to contradict
what I heard during the jTUG meeting (but maybe all six of them were
present!).
 
 
Yoshio was also about to publish a more detailed text on \AMSTeX\ -- but
then Version 2.0 was announced.  So he got the new version only to find
that it will not run on the most commonly used platform for \TeX\
amongst academic users in Japan: the NEC PC 9800 series. This  problem
was also demonstrated to me at the ICM by Oleg Viro from Leningrad who had
brought his PC right across Siberia to demonstrate the problem! He is using
PC\TeX\ so I am sure that he will not be alone -- attention all \TeX\
support staff, you have been warned: {\it no} `standard' \TeX\
implementations can run \AMSTeX\ 2.0 with {\tt amsppt.sty}, let alone
\AMSLaTeX\ (which {\it has\/} now been released).
 


 
BTW (as the editor of this august journal would say), in case
you are wondering how to typeset in the traditional Japanese way
the secret is given in the figure below, taken,
without permission, from Appendix D of Yoshio's book.
% Japanese insert (could be float)
\rightline{\sl Chris Rowley} 
\enddoublecolumns
\vskip220pt
\begindoublecolumns
\endinput
</pre></body></html>