Conference rusure::math

edp:

	I think that this is a terrific idea.   There have been some really
neat submissions in this conference, and I would love them to reach a wider
readership.

	Although there is a great deal of rich material here, I think there
is a substantial amount of editing work required.   After all, there are
now over 1400 notes, and the notes were never written from the perspective
that they would be widely handed out.   There's also a number of references
to be chased up in various areas, and authors to be contacted etc.   Legal
things with Digital also need addressing.

	A key question is the marketing one:  what kind of a book do we want
here?   What kind of readership would we be looking for?   How do we push it
out to a wider audience?

	The quality of graphics is also a key thing for such a book.

	I am shortly going to be forced to take a lot of holiday which I
would otherwise lose.   I will not incense the US folk in this conference by
enlarging on how much holiday time is given in France.   Currently, I do not 
know what I am going to do with July, except that I intend to be in the US
for some of it to go to a Con.   I would regard putting some time into this
sort of project as an excellent way to spend time.

	However, that's only a little amount of time that I can give.   How
do other people feel?

	So basically, I'll get in touch with Stan, but I wanted to put in
this enthusiastic reply so that people knew how I felt.

Cheers,
Andrew.

        I also like the idea, as long as I get to correct any
        mistakes in my notes first. :-)
        
        Dan

>                           -< immortalized forever? >-

	Yes, temporary immortalization doesn't have the same appeal somehow.

Andrew.

        "I don't want to be made immortal through my work.  I
        want to be immortal through living forever."
        
        	-attributed to Woody Allen
        
        Dan

I plan to move ahead with this idea. I have communicated with Stan and a 
couple of others about the idea and we are all enthusiastic about it.

It is important that we get permissions from contributors to include their 
material. We will certainly honor anyone's request NOT to include them, but 
I think we need something more positive. So if you favor the production of 
such a book, and allow us to use your contibution(s), PLEASE LET ME KNOW by 
E-mail (don't clutter the Conference with this info) AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. 
It will save me the effort of having to track you down. (I alone have 
contributed under three different account names on a half-dozen nodes. I'm 
glad I don't have to track myself down!)

Many thanks,

Lynn Yarbrough 

    There is a typographical error in .0; Stan's electronic mail address is
    72717.3515@compuserve.com.  Within DEC, you can send mail to
    decwrl::"72717.3515@compuserve.com".
    
    
    				-- edp

Two years ago we made a move from Lexington, MA to Washington, DC, and it
was a difficult experience saying goodbye to over a hundred business
associates, church members, neighbors, bridge partners, whatever - and I am
sure we failed to say goodbye to a few people who, for whatever reason, we
simply failed to run into before we left. Now I am retiring from DEC [as of 
31 May '92], and faced with having to do the same with another hundred or
so people whom I know "electronically". It is not something I enjoy. 

The community of mathematicians, salespeople, computer scientists, and 
whatever that we now leave behind has been amazingly enriching to me, and I 
hope I have made some positive impact on a few of you. I value you all as
friends - even though most of us have never actually met. I hope that there 
will in the future be some way that we can continue to communicate about 
some of the issues we have dealt with here - I hope to remain active. Yes, 
I have a copy of MAPLE on my PC at home!

I am still working on the "Math Notes" book, with Stan Rabinowitz. He has 
been very encouraging, although I have not been able to take the time and 
energy to go ahead very fast. Unless I take another job quickly, I should 
now have time to finish it - I have transcribed most of the notes to my PC,
too.

Special thanks to Topher Cooper, who has agreed to take over the MAPLE
conference. 

Please keep in touch. I can be reached at 

	Lynn Yarbrough 
	931 Park St. SE
	Vienna, VA 22180
	(703)938-4019

My warmest regards and best wishes to you all! 

    Lynn Yarbrough sent me the following letter to enter here.
    
    
    				-- edp
    
    
    
    Dear Eric (and all my friends in the Math conference),
    
    As you know from discussion in the MATH conference, I made a commitment
    before I retired from DEC to publish, with the cooperation of Stan
    Rabinowitz and others, a collection of notes from the conference in
    book form.  Before embarking on this effort I asked in the conference
    for permission from the members to go forward, and although I got only
    a few responses to that inquiry, none of them were negative then, nor
    have I heard directly of any opposition to continuing this effort. 
    Since my retirement I have spent a lot of time getting the notes into
    readable format (with, by the way, considerable help from Andy
    Buchanan), and since there appears also to have been some discussion in
    this conference as well as the Moderator's conference about the
    appropriateness of such an enterprise, I think I owe everyone a status
    report to clear the air.
    
    There is evidently enough material in the conference for a whole
    library of books.  My current plan is to publish a subset of the first
    100 notes, probably about 50 taken from the following list:
    
    1, 2, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 27, 29,
    30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 37, 39, 40, 41, 42, 44, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52,
    53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72,
    73, 75, 78, 79, 81, 83, 84, 85, 87, 90, 91, 92, 94, 95, 97, 99.
    
    Let me say that I have not yet made a final decision about which of
    these to include, so any suggestions from DEC contributors, about which
    of these should give way to others, would be welcome.
    
    In editing I have replaced all references to node::account with the
    account owner's full name (e.g. "HARE::STAN" with "Stan Rabinowitz"(),
    except in those rare occasions when I could not recover the author's
    name (a lot of contributors have disappeared).  I have also deleted
    USENET path names, etc. where a breach of privacy might be involved.  I
    made a unilateral decision to delete *all* signatures, which those of
    you who have invested emotional energy into making very personal may
    not appreciate.  Each note will be headed with something like:
    
    note.reply                   Author Name                  date
                              <note/reply title>
    
    I have made the assumption that actual names in USENET and other
    similar networks are public and retained them, for better or for worse. 
    I have reformatted a large percentage of the formulas, using MS Word
    and its related Math editor, so the appearance will be something
    between its original ugly form and what a *real* math book would look
    like:  that is to say, it will be more readable than, but retain much
    of the flavor of, the original.  I have made numerous grammatical
    corrections, so those of you form whom English is a second language
    will be more understandable :-) .  I have retained most of the jargon,
    not all of which I understand, but hey ...
    
    I have been working through a number of the legal issues with Kevin
    Hartley of DEC's legal dept., here in the Washington area.  One of the
    things we have discovered is that there is no precedent for publishing
    material from Notes, and the only guideline is that DEC owns the
    Copyright and the final say about what material may be included. 
    Toward sorting this out, Eric Postpischil has kindly reviewed the
    material for DEC-sensitivity issues.
    
    We are ready to publish what we have, but reluctant to go forward
    without having appropriate approvals.  Now is the time to speak up.  If
    you want your name or material kept out of the book, I am willing
    either to keep you anonymous or omit notes that you feel are
    inappropriate - there is ample material to work from - but please speak
    your mind now, i.e. before May 1, 1993.
    
    You may contact me by US Mail at:
    
    	Lynn Yarbrough
    	931 Park Street SE
    	Vienna, VA  22180
    	(703)938-4019
    
    Thanks,
    
    Lynn