The next Osp Public Meet will take place on Monday the 23rd. For this third edition, we will try to precise our exhibitionist experiment of talking internal affairs in public. Here below are the few code lines of the new version.

Thank you Sarah Magnan who was with us the past two weeks!

18h00 ¬ This is an OSP meet. It’s a regular meeting, it is not presentations (let’s repeat it : normally these meetings are internal). We have all trivia to discuss, but these trivia bring us to discuss things that seems to be more broad and could be interesting. A lot of people ask us what is OSP and how we work, and one day we thought that maybe a way to enter in contact with us is this strange operation of doing an internal stuff in public. It could be frustrating, but we’ve decided to push it further than the presentations we’ve done in the two previous public meets. Read the ordre du jour, come, take a seat, don’t expect to understand everything, but we hope that some stuff could interest you. The hardcore core! We smoke!
As ordre du jour, keypoints in the agenda, some current jobs such as Danslab, Stuttgart workshop, osp website and server, aether9 publication, OSP summer school, Relais Culture Europe, Spion and Link.

19h30 ¬ React to what you’ve seen/heard, bring some projects that you want to show us, we present some stuff we want to share with you (and between us), we discuss. Table ronde! And we drink beer, bring some! We continue to smoke!

21h00 ¬ We eat something, bring some food and more to drink. We continue to discuss, but the music -free- begin with some volume. And dance!

So on my way to the Visual Culture codebase today I happened upon a rabbit hole that was too inviting not to descend into:

(Note that all names in this email are new to me as of today).

In response to a new LaTeX users questions about ‘best practices’ for laying out a letterhead, Frank Mittelbach responded with a solution using the new LaTeX3 technique of "coffins".¹

After demonstrating the letterhead, he presents a sample of Tschichold and a challenge for others to reproduce the sample ‘without coffins’.

Yiannis Lazarides responded with a non-coffin version, though the discussion did not extend very far because the code was not very accurate as a replica.²

The rabbit hole itself was a thread asking why one would program in LaTeX3 when one can avoid the encumberances of using TeX as a programming language by using the \directlua{} macro (actually one of only a few new TeX macros found in LuaTeX).³ Frank Mittelbach explains that this is a false dichotomy, as LaTeX3 is designed to operate on four separate levels. The main work on LaTeX3 has been in stabilizing it’s underlying programming layer. This has apparently been finalized and so real work can proceed on the other layers. The coffins interface is not set, for instance:

The implementation of coffins for expl3 is stable. However the
user-level interface isn’t yet! Right now we have two alternatives,
one with a keyval system and one just with optional arguments, I used
the latter above. But both might get refinements, especially after we
get feedback from people actually “designing” with it. user-level interface isn’t yet! Right now we have two alternatives, one with a keyval system and one just with optional arguments, I used the latter above. But both might get refinements, especially after we get feedback from people actually "designing" with it

There is no reason, ultimately, that the programming layer (this cryptencoded ‘expl3′) cannot be rewritten in Lua if a situation would warrant it. The flip side of this statement is that any similar venture could build something like coffins purely out of Lua, perhaps with less pain in the meantime. The flip side of that flip side is that LaTeX3 only require eTeX, which is supported by all major TeX interpreters in use today, while LuaTeX may or may not reach it’s stated 1.0 in 2012 goal.

Thoughts

• Finally seeing some Latex3 in action! The model of multiple layers is interesting, and their architectural choice to have a stable set of underlying calls which are then built upon in libraries was a smart choice, as demonstrated by their ability to rewrite the whole thing in Lua if there is call too.

• I immediately wondered what the relevant code would look like in the newest beta of Context and am curious to dig into these ‘coffins’.

• I did not know that Håkon Wium Lie⁴ wrote a Phd thesis on his work with CSS⁵. I read today that he takes a great deal from TeX’s box model.

• TeX StackExchange⁶ is providing a very productive space for enhancing and discussing typographic programming.

• To wit, I liked the reminder of the ‘eyes’, ‘mouth’, and ‘stomach’ metaphor for the functioning of TeX that was mentioned in this response as to whether TeX⁷ provides a good foundation for learning programming. A spooky embodiment, with all this talk of coffins?

References

How can we re-imagine lay-out from scratch? What tools do we need to support decentralized collaboration? How can we bring together canvas editing, dynamic lay-outs, web-to-print and Print On Demand in more interesting ways?

These are the questions developed at the Libre Graphics Research unit Co-position meeting. The LGRU is a research project developed by a number of European Media Art institutions, inspired in part by the practice of OSP.

The Variable house fills progressively with guests that will develop those questions the next four days! As a pre-meeting, our friends Ana and Ricardo have lead a colorfont workshop. Many of us will also take part in the meeting, presenting and managing work sessions.

Saturday, the 25th of February, between 13:30 and 15:30 at Halles de Schaerbeek, we conclude with a presentation of prototypes and discussion chaired by Angela Plohman (Baltanlabs, Eindhoven). With : Ana Carvalho, Stéphanie Vilayphiou, Camille Bissuel, Antonio Roberts and many others.