PenLUG Meeting Thursday, 11/13/2003 7-9pm @ Oracle, Redwood Shores

Mon Nov 10 23:23:23 PST 2003

You are invited to attend this month's meeting of PenLUG, the Peninsula
Linux Users' Group, Thursday November 13, 2003, from 7-9pm.  We meet at
the Oracle headquarters in Redwood Shores, just south of San Mateo.
Address: 100 Oracle Parkway, Redwood City, CA 94065 (room 1op104).

  NOTE: To avoid conflicts with the Thanksgiving and Christmas
  holidays, we will be meeting on the 2nd Thursday in November and
  December.  We will return to the 4th Thursday in January 2004.

For directions, see our website at http://www.penlug.org/ or reply to
this email.  RSVP (optional, but appreciated) to rsvp at penlug.org if
you plan to attend.  If you need carpool help, email carpool at penlug.org.

Here is the agenda for the meeting:

 7:00pm - 7:30pm   Town Hall Meeting on "Linux in the Community"
 7:30pm - 8:30pm   Keynote: Akbar S. Ahmed on
		   "Understanding Texinfo - Next Generation Man Pages"
 8:30pm - 9:00pm   App of the Month Club: Emacs and Xemacs

Detailed information about each of these items follows.

Town Hall Meeting on "Linux in the Community"
---------------------------------------------
Budget shortfalls have had a huge impact on the ability of schools and
community agencies to purchase computers and expensive Microsoft
licenses.  Linux offers a cheaper alternative because it runs just
fine on older, slower hardware and there is no cost for the operating
system.  We need to help schools and other organizations understand
how Linux can be easy and effective for them to adopt, and how it can
benefit them to be using open source tools to set the foundations for
tomorrow's software developers.

Akbar S. Ahmed, "Understanding Texinfo - Next Generation Man Pages"
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Texinfo and the Info viewer comprise the official documentation format 
of the GNU project.  Info offers a next generation upgrade to the tried 
and true man pages, however it is often underutilized or not used at all.
An overview of Info will be provided including a brief history, a quick 
start guide including commands and concepts, and a real life example of 
the Info/Texinfo based documentation used at Delixus, Inc.  Experiences 
will be shared as to the limits of Info and how it stacks up against the 
competition, including docbook and tex.  A list of info viewers will be 
provided including pseudo-graphical viewers for both Linux and Windows.
Texinfo, the language used to create info files, will be explained in 
detail including @-commands, general syntax, document structure, and 
outputting of texinfo files into other formats, such as text and html.
An explanation of how to use texinfo mode in Emacs to author texinfo 
files along with an overview of how to view info files using the 
built-in Emacs viewer.

Akbar S. Ahmed is the President and COO of Delixus, Inc. a software
development and services company with offices in the U.S. and India.
Delixus develops interoperability software for Linux and Windows, has
created a customized Linux distro (Delixus Linux), and is currently
developing a grid computing platform using Linux.  Delixus offers
consulting, software development, BPO, and animation services in North
America and Asia.  Akbar splits his time between the United States and
India, where he leads the development of Delixus' product
offerings.  He is an advocate of Linux usage in small to medium-sized
businesses and is fascinated by inter-networking of Linux and
Windows.  He holds an MBA in Information Sciences and a BA in
Economics.  In India, Delixus and the Indian Government have
co-sponsored a rural I.T. mobile labs program whereby state-of-the-art
vans provide mobile I.T. labs to schools too poor to have either
computers or the power necessary to run the labs.

App of the Month Club: Emacs and Xemacs
---------------------------------------
In September we did vi and vim, so it was only fair to give Emacs a
turn.  Come share your favorite Emacs tips and tricks.  But let's not
get into an argument about which editor is better, just how to make
the most of Emacs or Xemacs.

-- 
William R Ward            bill at wards.net          http://www.wards.net/~bill/
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           PROFESSIONAL PROGRAMMER, CLOSED COURSE.  DO NOT ATTEMPT.