[Textures] The future of Textures

Reinhard Diestel ReinhardDiestel at math.uni-hamburg.de
Thu Jun 27 05:56:37 EDT 2013


Dr Allegra Smith, widow of the late Barry Smith, creator of Textures, has now replied to my original post in the TeX StackExchange forum, and following this we have established personal contact. This looks very promising for Textures as far as personal commitment from her side is concerned. However, things should obviously be handled with the utmost care and sensitivity.

In particular, we should let her choose with whom she would like to look into these things. She has named someone, a trusted friend and long-term companion to Barry Smith (as I understand it, also in Textures matters) whom she has suggested I might wish to meet if I were to represent any group of individuals interested in keeping Textures alive. I have agreed to this, and a first meeting has been loosely scheduled for September.

In order that this may remain a broad effort of all those interested in a future of Textures, please let me know if you'd like to join it. Would you like and be able to...

 - offer qualified technical assistance at a software development level, or do you know qualified people who could do this? (The quality of any future edition of Textures is something close to her heart, so this is a serious point.)

 - offer a financial contribution should there be a joint effort to buy the rights collectively?

I have also suggested to Allegra Smith that we should try to involve the TUG, which she herself mentioned. We might also look towards learned societies, such as the AMS, for support - both financially and in terms of advice on how to bring something into the public domain if even when it involves non-negligable costs.

I look forward to hearing from you,
Reinhard Diestel



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