TUGboat, Volume 37 (2016), No. 2 901

R.I.P.—S.P.Q.RSebastian Patrick Quintus Rahtz(13.2.1955–15.3.2016)

Frank Mittelbach and Joan Richmond(translator)*

There are a small number of people in the worldwideTEX community whose activities in the nineties havebeen instrumental in shaping the TEX world as weknow it today. Sebastian Rahtz, known also by theabbreviation SPQR, was without any doubt one ofthis group.

Sebastian was born as the fifth child (Quintus)of a family of archaeologists, which shaped the wholeof his future life. He began his career with an M.A. inarchaeology and as late as 2009 he was still describingthe Protestant graveyard in Rome as the place inwhich he most enjoyed being [5].

Sebastian, colorful asalways in one of his strikingoutfits — 2005

Already during his earlytime as a university lecturerin Humanities Computing atSouthampton University, hebecame involved with type-setting classical texts, suchas “The Lexicon of GreekPersonal Names” (LGPN),and at some point he camein contact with TEX, whichthen became the centre of hiswork for almost two decades.

After Southampton, heworked for some time as afreelance consultant at sev-eral places, including CERN,where he worked with MichelGoossens. After that he tooka post with Elsevier, wherehe was principally involved

with TEX and its use in scientific publishing. Roughlyat the turn of the millennium he moved over to be-come Information Manager at the Oxford UniversityComputing Services (OUCS), and in the followingyears undertook various positions in higher manage-ment there.

Sebastian was a pragmatist, who did thingswhen they had to be done, so it is not surprising thata number of things which were significant for thespread and further development of TEX and LATEXcan be traced back to him. A great deal of this was

* Mrs. Richmond kindly agreed to translate the German textthat originally appeared in TEXnische Komodie, the journalof the German TEX user group, DANTE e.V. [4]. She is theauthor of the book “Nine letters from an artist: the familiesof William Gillard”.

confined to “behind the scenes” operations, as com-munity service, and consequently is not necessarilyknown by the substantial majority of today’s TEXusers, but all these activities were hugely importantat the time and exercised a decisive influence on theway TEX is presented to its users today.

In the eighties crucially important aspects werethe further spread of TEX, the porting of the pro-grams to new operating systems, the development ofprinter drivers for new devices and the like. Distri-butions existed as “tapes” for individual operatingsystems and Sebastian began his TEX life as a co-ordinator and distributor of tapes for SunOS.

Sebastian at the “PoetryContest” — Vancouver 1999

His engagement in themaintenance and expansionof the Aston TEX archive(working with Peter Ab-bott and others) was a log-ical next step, from whichCTAN (the ComprehensiveTEX Archive Network) wassubsequently born, so thatSebastian is effectively oneof the founding fathers ofCTAN as we know it today.

In those days, an In-ternet connection for mostTEX users was either rudi-mentary (a 300kbps modemwas usual) or not available atall, so that the distributionof TEX software via floppydiscs, CDs and later DVDsbecame of decisive impor-tance with the rise of distri-butions for Atari, PC, Amigaand other computer systems. Anyone who still ownsa TEX Live disc from that period can verify thatSebastian’s name appears as editor. He was theone who constructed the first TEX Live installation(based on the Unix distribution of Thomas Esser),and over the next few years, together with a fewother volunteers, he continually improved it. Thefirst seven or eight TEX Live productions carry hisname as the responsible editor into the year 2004.

As I see it, both CTAN and TEX Live are vitallyimportant milestones in the history of TEX, withoutwhich we would perhaps no longer know and use TEXand LATEX today, since they were absolutely decisivefor wider distribution of the software.

But Sebastian’s name is also linked to severalmacro packages which are still important today, de-spite the fact that he played down the importance ofthis work in an interview with Dave Walden [5]: these

R.I.P. — S.P.Q.R Sebastian Patrick Quintus Rahtz (13.2.1955–15.3.2016)

902 TUGboat, Volume 37 (2016), No. 2

include the early versions of graphics, producedwith David Carlisle, and the monumental packagehyperref which subsequently saw further develop-ment by Heiko Oberdiek.

In the new millennium Sebastian turned hisattention to new tasks outside the world of TEX,among which are his activities on TEI (Text CodingInitiative) and OSS Watch. It is fair to say that theXML world fascinated and absorbed him in the sameway that the TEX world had done decades before.

Sebastian was in many respects a model for us toimitate. He never left construction sites behind him(such as one encounters all too often in the world ofTEX and elsewhere), but always left behind him workthat was ordered and finished, and — when he nolonger had enough energy or interest in something —he never clung to it but happily handed it on in goodtime and in good condition to a successor.

Sebastian “preaching”about XML and PassiveTEX, with a t-shirt fromSan Francisco (1997);in our hearts we are alltraditionalists, I still ownthis too — Oxford 2000

I no longer recall ex-actly when I got to knowSebastian personally, but itmust have been sometime atthe beginning of the nineties.In the course of the follow-ing years we attacked vari-ous projects together. Themost important of these arethe NFSS (New Font Selec-tion Scheme for LATEX), inwhich he undertook the inte-gration of the 35 standardPostScript fonts and laterthe book projects The LATEXGraphics Companion [1, 2]and The LATEX Web Com-panion [3].

Ever since then I havevalued him as both colleagueand friend, and there are anumber of activities which Iwould like to remember. To

start with, the nightly coding sessions (via e-mail),during which I once asked him how he could combinethat with the care of his little daughter. To whichhe replied that she kept him awake, lay on his lapand helped him. Whereupon he sent me a pictureof Matilde (6 months old) and himself “working to-gether”. Or a walk on a free day during a conference,during which he dragged me forcibly into a bookshop, ran straight to the children’s section, huntedout a book that was completely unknown to me, andsaid “Buy”. It looked rather odd, with the pictureof a boy wearing glasses, but I followed his advice,bought it, and began to read it that same evening.

By four o’clock the following morning I had finishedit, and would rather not want to know how my lec-ture went that morning. The book was by a stillfairly unknown woman writer at that time, and wascalled “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”.

Sebastian was a “philosopher in his own right”,with a lovable, dry English sense of humor, whichoften delighted me. This spring, his journey endeddue to cancer. My thoughts are with him and hisfamily.

Rest In Peace, S.P.Q.R.

References

[1] Michel Goossens, Sebastian Rahtz, andFrank Mittelbach. The LATEX GraphicsCompanion: Illustrating Documents with TEXand PostScript. Addison-Wesley series on Toolsand Techniques for Computer Typesetting.Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, USA, 1997.

[2] Michel Goossens, Frank Mittelbach, SebastianRahtz, Denis Roegel, and Herbert Voß,editors. The LATEX Graphics Companion.Addison-Wesley series on Tools and Techniquesfor Computer Typesetting. Addison-Wesley,Reading, MA, USA, second edition, 2008.

[3] Michel Goossens and Sebastian Rahtz. TheLATEX Web Companion: Integrating TEX,HTML, and XML. Addison-Wesley serieson Tools and Techniques for ComputerTypesetting. Addison-Wesley Longman,Reading, MA, USA, 1999. With Eitan M.Gurari and Ross Moore and Robert S. Sutor.

[4] Frank Mittelbach. Sebastian Patrick QuintusRahtz. Die TEXnische Komodie, 2/16, S. 24–27,Mai 2016.

[5] David Walden. Interview with Sebastian Rahtz,2009. https://tug.org/interviews/rahtz.

html.

Sebastian among his family: Ines, Leonorand Matilde — 2014

Frank Mittelbach and Joan Richmond