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Intercity bus service

An intercity bus service (North American English) or intercity coach service (British English and Commonwealth English), also called a long-distance, express, over-the-road, commercial, long-haul, or highway bus or coach service, is a public transport service using coaches to carry passengers significant distances between different cities, towns, or other populated areas. Unlike a transit bus service, which has frequent stops throughout a city or town, an intercity bus service generally has a single stop at one location in or near a city, and travels long distances without stopping at all. Intercity bus services may be operated by government agencies or private industry, for profit and not for profit. Intercity coach travel can serve areas or countries with no train services, or may be set up to compete with trains by providing a more flexible or cheaper alternative.

Intercity bus services are of prime importance in lightly populated rural areas that often have little or no public transportation.

Intercity bus services are one of four common transport methods between cities, not all of which are available in all places. The others are by airliner, train, and private automobile.

Stagecoaches
The first intercity scheduled transport service was called the stagecoach and originated in the 17th century. Crude coaches were being built from the 16th century in England, but without suspension, these coaches achieved very low speeds on the poor quality rutted roads of the time. By the mid 17th century, a basic stagecoach infrastructure was being put in place. The first stagecoach route started in 1610 and ran from Edinburgh to Leith. This was followed by a steady proliferation of other routes around the country.

A string of coaching inns operated as stopping points for travellers on the route between London and Liverpool by the mid 17th century. The coach would depart every Monday and Thursday and took roughly ten days to make the journey during the summer months. They also became widely adopted for travel in and around London by mid-century and generally travelled at a few miles per hour. Shakespeare's first plays were staged at coaching inns such as The George Inn, Southwark.

The speed of travel remained constant until the mid-18th century. Reforms of the turnpike trusts, new methods of road building and the improved construction of coaches all led to a sustained rise in the comfort and speed of the average journey—from an average journey length of 2 days for the Cambridge-London route in 1750 to a length of under 7 hours in 1820. Robert Hooke helped in the construction of some of the first spring-suspended coaches in the 1660s and spoked wheels with iron rim brakes were introduced, improving the characteristics of the coach.

In 1754, a Manchester-based company began a new service called the "Flying Coach". It was advertised with the following announcement: "However incredible it may appear, this coach will actually (barring incidents) arrive in London in four days and a half after leaving Manchester." A similar service was begun from Liverpool three years later, using coaches with steel spring suspension. This coach took an unprecedented three days to reach London with an average speed of eight miles per hour.

Even more dramatic improvements to coach speed were made by John Palmer at the British Post Office, who commissioned a fleet of mail coaches to deliver the post across the country. His experimental coach left Bristol at 4 pm on 2 August 1784 and arrived in London just 16 hours later.

The golden age of the stagecoach was during the Regency period, from 1800 to 1830. The era saw great improvements in the design of the coaches, notably by John Besant in 1792 and 1795. His coach had a greatly improved turning capacity and braking system, and a novel feature that prevented the wheels from falling off while the coach was in motion. Obadiah Elliott registered the first patent for a spring-suspension vehicle. Each wheel had two durable steel leaf springs on each side and the body of the carriage was fixed directly to the springs attached to the axles.

Steady improvements in road construction were also made at this time, most importantly the widespread implementation of Macadam roads up and down the country. Coaches in this period travelled at around 12 miles per hour and greatly increased the level of mobility in the country, both for people and for mail. Each route had an average of four coaches operating on it at one time - two for both directions and a further two spares in case of a breakdown en route.

Motorbuses
The development of railways in the 1830s spelt the end for the stagecoaches across Europe and America, with only a few companies surviving to provide services for short journeys and excursions until the early years of the 20th century.

The first motor coaches were acquired by operators of those horse-drawn vehicles. W. C. Standerwick of Blackpool, England acquired its first motor charabanc in 1911, and Royal Blue from Bournemouth acquired its first motor charabanc in 1913. Motor coaches were initially used only for excursions.

In 1919, Royal Blue took advantage of a rail strike to run a coach service from Bournemouth to London. The service was so successful that it expanded rapidly. In 1920 the Minister of Transport Eric Campbell Geddes was quoted in Punch magazine as saying "I think it would be a calamity if we did anything to prevent the economic use of charabancs" and expressed concern at the problems caused to small charabanc and omnibus operators in parliament.

In America, Carl Eric Wickman began providing the first service in 1913. Frustrated about being unable to sell a seven-passenger automobile on the showroom floor of the dealership where he worked, he purchased the vehicle himself and started using it to transport miners between Hibbing and Alice, Minnesota. He began providing this service regularly in what would start a new company and industry. The company would one day be known as Greyhound.

In 1914, Pennsylvania was the first state to pass regulations for bus service in order to prevent monopolies of the industry from forming. All remaining U.S. states would soon follow.

The coach industry expanded rapidly in the 1920s, a period of intense competition. The Road Traffic Act 1930 in the UK introduced a national system of regulation of passenger road transport and authorised local authorities to operate transport services. It also imposed a speed limit of 30 mph for coaches whilst removing any speed limit for private cars.

The 1930s to the 1950s saw the development of bus stations for intercity transport. Many expanded from simple stops into major architecturally designed terminals that included shopping and other businesses. Intercity bus transport increased in speed, efficiency and popularity until the 1950s and 1960s, when as the popularity of the private automobile has increased, the use of intercity bus service has declined. For example, in Canada in the 1950s, 120 million passengers boarded intercity bus service each year; in the 1960s, this number declined to 50 million. During the 1990s, it was down to 10 million.

Characteristics of intercity buses/coaches
Intercity buses, as they hold passengers for significant periods of time on long journeys, are designed for comfort. Intercity buses, also known as coaches or motor coaches are almost always high-floor buses, with separate luggage hold mounted below the passenger compartment. In contrast to transit buses, motor coaches typically feature forward-facing seating, with no provision for standing. Other accommodations may include onboard restrooms, televisions, and overhead luggage space. A sleeper bus is an example of a vehicle with optimum amenity for the longest travel times, specially adapted for passengers to sleep in.

Route and operation
An intercity coach service may depart from a bus station with facilities for travellers or from a simple roadside bus stop. A coachway interchange is a term (in the United Kingdom) for a stopping place on the edge of a town, with connecting local transport. Park and ride facilities allow passengers to begin or complete their journeys by automobile. Intercity bus routes may follow a direct highway or freeway/motorway for shortest journey times, or travel via a scenic route for the enjoyment of passengers.

Intercity buses may run less frequently and with fewer stops than a transit bus service. One common arrangement is to have several stops at the beginning of the trip, and several near the end, with the majority of the trip non-stop on a highway. Some stops may have service restrictions, such as "boarding only" (also called "pickup only") and "discharge only" (also called "set-down only"). Routes aimed at commuters may have most or all scheduled trips in the morning heading to an urban central business district, with trips in the evening mainly heading toward suburbs.

Intercity coaches may also be used to supplement or replace another transport service, for example when a train or airline route is not in service.

Safety
Statistically, intercity bus service is considered to be a very safe mode of transportation. For example, in the United States there are about 0.5 fatalities per 100 million passenger miles traveled according to the National Safety Council.

Crashes involving intercity buses can be disastrous in their magnitude because of the large number of passengers they are capable of carrying. For example, the Kempsey bus crash in Australia on 22 December 1989 involved two full tourist coaches, each traveling at 100 km/h, colliding head-on: 35 people died and 41 were injured.

Canada
Intercity coach service is the only public transit to reach many urban centres in Canada, and Via Rail services are very sporadic outside the Québec City–Windsor Corridor. Coach service is mostly privately owned and operated, and tends to be regionally focused. Greyhound Canada, once Canada's biggest intercity carrier, ceased operations in 2021. Major operators are listed below.

 * British Columbia, Alberta: BC Bus North, Pacific Western Transportation (Red Arrow and Ebus)
 * Ontario: Coach Canada (Megabus), FlixBus, GO Transit, Ontario Northland
 * Quebec: Orleans Express, Intercar, Limocar
 * Maritime Provinces: Maritime Bus
 * Newfoundland: DRL Coachlines

United States
In the mid-1950s more than 2,000 buses operated by Greyhound Lines, Trailways, and other companies connected 15,000 cities and towns. Passenger volume decreased as a result of expanding road and air travel, and urban decay that caused many neighborhoods with bus depots to become more dangerous. In 1960, American intercity buses carried 140 million riders; the rate decreased to 40 million by 1990, and continued to decrease until 2006.

By 1997, intercity bus transportation accounted for only 3.6% of travel in the United States. In the late 1990s, however, Chinatown bus lines that connected New York with Boston and Philadelphia's Chinatowns began operating. They became popular with non-Chinese college students and others who wanted inexpensive transportation, and between 1997 and 2007 Greyhound lost 60% of its market share in the northeast United States to the Chinatown buses. During the following decade, new bus lines such as Megabus and BoltBus emulated the Chinatown buses' practices of low prices and curbside stops on a much larger scale, both in the original Northeast Corridor and elsewhere, while introducing yield management techniques to the industry.

By 2010 curbside buses' annual passenger volume had risen by 33% and they accounted for more than 20% of all bus trips. One analyst estimated that curbside buses that year carried at least 2.4 billion passenger miles in the Northeast Corridor, compared to 1.7 billion passenger miles for Amtrak trains. Traditional depot-based bus lines also grew, benefiting from what the American Bus Association called "the Megabus effect", akin to the Southwest Effect, and both Greyhound and its subsidiary Yo! Bus, which competed directly with the Chinatown buses, benefited after the federal government shut several Chinatown lines down in June 2012.

Between 2006 and 2014, American intercity buses focused on medium-haul trips between 200 (322 km) and 300 miles (483 km); airplanes performed the bulk of longer trips and automobiles shorter ones. For most medium-haul trips curbside bus fares were less than the cost of automobile gasoline, and one tenth that of Amtrak. Buses are also four times more fuel-efficient than automobiles. Their Wi-Fi service is also popular; one study estimated that 92% of Megabus and BoltBus passengers planned to use an electronic device. New lower fares introduced by Greyhound on traditional medium-distance routes and rising gasoline prices have increased ridership across the network and made bus travel cheaper than all alternatives.

Effective June 25, 2014, Greyhound reintroduced many much longer bus routes, including New York–Los Angeles, Los Angeles–Vancouver, and others, while increasing frequencies on existing long-distance and ultra-long-distance buses routes. This turned back the tide of shortening bus routes and puts Greyhound back in the position of competing with long-distance road trips, airlines, and trains. Long-distance buses were to have Wi-Fi, power outlets, and extra legroom, sometimes extra recline, and were to be cleaned, refueled, and driver-changed at major stations along the way, coinciding with Greyhound's eradication of overbooking. It also represented Greyhound's traditional bus expansion over the expansion of curbside bus lines.

Safety on U.S. intercity buses
On August 4, 1952, Greyhound Lines had its deadliest crash when two Greyhound buses collided head-on along then-U.S. Route 81 near Waco, Texas. The fuel tanks of both buses then ruptured, bursting into flames. Of the 56 persons aboard both coaches, 28 were killed, including both drivers.

On May 9, 1980, a freight ship collided with the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, resulting in several vehicles, including a Greyhound bus, falling into the Tampa Bay. All 26 people on the bus perished, along with nine others. This is the largest loss of life on a single Greyhound coach to date.

On March 5, 2010, a bus operated by Tierra Santa Inc. crashed on Interstate 10 in Arizona, killing six and injuring sixteen passengers. The bus was not carrying insurance, and had also been operating illegally because the company had applied for authority to operate an interstate bus service, but had failed to respond to requests for additional information.

Security on U.S. intercity buses
Though generally rare, various incidents have occurred over time involving both drivers and passengers on intercity buses.

Security became a concern following the September 11 attacks. Less than a month later, on October 3, 2001, Damir Igric, a passenger on a Greyhound bus, slit the throat of the driver (who later survived his injuries and was hospitalized) and tried to take control of the bus, resulting in a crash that killed 7 passengers, including Igric, and injuring six other passengers. It was determined there was no connection between the September 11 attacks and this incident. Nevertheless, this raised concern.

On September 30, 2002, another Greyhound driver was assaulted near Fresno, California, resulting in two passenger deaths after the bus then rolled off an embankment and crashed. Following this attack, driver shields were installed on most Greyhound buses that now prevent passengers from directly having contact with the driver while the bus is in motion, even if the shield is forced open. On buses which do not have the shield, the seats directly behind the driver are generally off limits.

The growing popularity in the United States of new bus lines such as Megabus and BoltBus that pick up and drop off passengers on the street instead of bus depots has led to a rise in the perceived security of intercity buses. Megabus states that a quarter of its passengers are unaccompanied women.

China
In relatively developed regions of China where the motorway network is extensive, intercity coach is a common mean of transport between cities. In some cities, for example Shenzhen, nearly every town / district has a coach station.

Coach services can be further categorised into high speed (via motorway, Chinese: 高速客运) and low speed (via national highways, Chinese: 低速客运) services, with the latter stopping along the route to carry rural passengers.

The number of people opting for long-distance bus travel is on the decline since 2014. Partly this is due to the development of high-speed rail, with train tickets having a similar price to bus tickets, and train services often being much faster, buses are not competitive anymore. Other reasons are the increase in private car ownership and the popularity of ride-hailing.

Long distance buses remain popular on routes where train tickets are quickly sold out and where the train station is located far from passenger destinations.

Since 2019, new bus routes longer than 800 km are restricted by law.

Hong Kong
There are numerous inter-city coach services between Hong Kong and various cities of Guangdong Province, e.g. Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Zhongshan and Zhuhai. These kinds of coaches are legally classified as a kind of non-franchised public bus, as "International Passenger Service".

In addition, there are some coach services which just carry passengers between the city of Hong Kong and the border crossing at Shenzhen, without entering the city centre in Shenzhen or further. These services are termed 'short-haul cross-boundary coach service' by the Transport Department which nearly the whole journey is within the limits of Hong Kong, as opposed to 'long-haul cross-boundary coach service' which runs between cities.

Indonesia
As an archipelagic nation, travel between Indonesian cities are done mostly through air and sea travel. Intercity railways are available primarily in Java and Sumatra, while it is not available or underdeveloped in other parts of the country. Thus the intercity bus service has become the major provider of land transportation service connecting Indonesian cities, either within an island or inter-island connected through ferry crossings.

The intercity bus operator companies in Indonesian with several major companies operating mainly in Java, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and Sumatra. The longest intercity bus service in Indonesia is a route operated by Antar Lintas Sumatera (ALS) connecting Medan in North Sumatra and Jember in East Java. It is a week long bus travel covering a distance of 2,920 kilometers.

The surge in intercity bus travel in Indonesia took place after the completion of Trans-Java highway section connecting Jakarta and Surabaya in 2018. During this time, some intercity bus services began operating fleet of double decker busses.

Besides regular domestic public transport, there is a bus company that serves the International route such as from Pontianak, Indonesia to Kuching, Malaysia and Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam in Borneo operated by state-owned bus company, DAMRI and some private operators. Another international bus service in Timor connects Kupang, Indonesia and Dili, Timor Leste.

Israel
Because of the weak-developed rail network and the small size of the country and the resulting low domestic air traffic, the long-distance bus cooperative Egged is the main public transport service in the country. Because of the widespread network, Egged is considered one of the largest bus companies in the world, in part because of the long-distance bus lines. However, in recent years Israel railways has expanded and upgraded its route network and other companies have taken over routes previously served by Egged.

Pakistan
Intercity bus transportation has risen dramatically in Pakistan due to the decline of Pakistan Railways and the unaffordable prices of airplanes for the average Pakistani. Numerous companies have started operating within the country such as Daewoo Express and Niazi Express, Manthar Bus Service and have gained considerable popularity due to their reliability, security and good service. Smaller vans are used for transportation in the mountainous north where narrow and dangerous roads make it impossible for the movement of larger buses.

Taiwan
Most of the time, coaches in Taiwan is driving on Controlled-access highway, so it is mainly called Highway Coach (Chinese name:國道客運). e.g. KBus (國光客運), UBus (統聯客運), HoHsin (和欣客運).

Turkey
Turkey has an extensive network of intercity buses. Every part of the country is served. The buses are popular, comfortable and frequent. For example, there are over 150 departures from Istanbul to Ankara each day. The level of onboard service is very high, with free drinks and snacks on long-distance routes. Notable operators including Pamukkale, Kâmil Koç, Metro, and Ulusoy. Tickets can be bought online from all of them or via bilet.com and obilet.com.

Europe
In the EU, inter-city bus service is regulated by Regulation (EC) No 1073/2009 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 21 October 2009. As part of the regulation:
 * carriers from all Member States should be guaranteed access to international transport markets without discrimination on grounds of nationality or place of establishment;
 * regular services provided as part of a regular international service should be opened up to non-resident carriers (“cabotage”);
 * authorization could be refused if the service would seriously affect the viability of a comparable service operated under one or more public service contracts (PSCs);
 * administrative formalities should be reduced as far as possible.

According to the EU statistical pocketbook the European bus and coach fleet amount to 822,900 vehicles in 2013.

Germany
Intercity coach service in Germany became important in the decades following the Second World War, as the Deutsche Bundesbahn and the German federal post office operated numerous bus routes in major cities and metropolitan areas associated with each other. While rail was quicker and more convenient, the buses were a low-cost alternative. With the increasing prosperity of society and the growing use of the automobile, the demand fell significantly and most of these lines were abolished in the 1970s and 1980s.

One exception was traffic from and to (West-)Berlin. A long-distance bus network linking Berlin with Hamburg and several other German locations was created at the time of German division because of the small number of train services between the cities. It still exists today.

Until 2012 new long-distance bus lines could only be added in accordance with "Passenger Transportation Act" (PBefG), meaning if they did not compete with existing rail or bus lines. Since Germany - in contrast with many other European countries - has a well-developed rail network to all major cities and metropolitan areas, the domestic marketing of long-distance buses in Germany was much less significant than in many other countries.

The existing lines were often international lines as exist in almost all European countries, and for the transportation within Germany, there was a ban.

In 2012, the PBefG was amended, essentially allowing intercity bus services. Thus, since 1 January 2013 Coach services have been allowed if they are longer than 50 kilometers, which led to a fast-growing market with companies like Meinfernbus, Deinbus, Flixbus, ADAC Postbus, Berlin Linien Bus GmbH and City2City. Starting shortly after the establishment of the market a consolidation process occurred, which reduced the number of competing companies. ADAC Postbus became Postbus upon the ADAC leaving the cooperation. Meinfernbus and Flixbus fused to create a common company (currently the biggest operator of long-distance buses in Germany) while City2City folded operations. Ultimately market consolidation led to Flixbus operating over 90% of route kilometers offered by long distance buses in Germany. However, shortly after achieving this nigh-monopoly, it was challenged by "BlaBlaBus" a subsidiary of BlaBlaCar entering the German market.

Greece
Since Greece's rail network was underdeveloped, intercity bus travel became important in the post-war years. The main bus operator in Greece is KTEL. It was founded in 1952.

Ireland
Generally slower than rail travel with refreshment and toilet stops required on longer routes. The main operators in the country are the Bus Éireann and private operators, such as JJ Kavanagh and Sons. The bus service between Dublin and Belfast is provided by Bus Éireann and Ulsterbus providing frequent service, including direct connections to Dublin Airport. Some bus services run overnight.

Latvia
Latvia has an extensive network of intercity coaches connecting different cities despite there are no motorways in the whole country. They are generally slower and more expensive than train travel, but offering a more frequent service These intercity coaches have stops at villages en route, providing public transport for rural residents.

Netherlands
In the relatively small Netherlands there is a limited number of long-distance routes within the country. In 1994, the Interliner-network started with express buses on connections devoid of rail transport. Owing to high fares, a dense rail network and other reasons, the Interliner network fell apart into several different systems. In 2014, only a limited number of express buses existed as regular public transport usually under the name Qliner.

 * 300 Groningen - Emmen Qbuzz
 * 304 Groningen - Drachten Arriva
 * 309 Groningen - Assen Qbuzz
 * 312 Groningen - Stadskanaal Qbuzz
 * 314 Groningen - Drachten Arriva
 * 315 Groningen - Heerenveen - Emmeloord Arriva
 * 320 Heereveen - Leeuwarden Arriva
 * 322 Drachten - Oosterwolde Arriva
 * 324 Groningen - Emmeloord Arriva
 * 335 Bolsward - Groningen Arriva
 * 350 Alkmaar - Leeuwarden Arriva
 * 351 Alkmaar - Harlingen Arriva
 * 355 Leeuwarden - Dokkum Arriva
 * 361 Sassenheim - Schiphol Arriva
 * 365 Leiden - Schiphol Arriva
 * 380/381 Alphen aan den Rijn - Den Haag Arriva
 * 382 Boskoop - Den Haag Arriva
 * 383 Krimpen aan den Ijssel - Den Haag Arriva
 * 385 Sassenheim - Den Haag Arriva
 * 386 Oestgeest - Den Haag Arriva
 * 387 Utrecht - Gorinchem Arriva
 * 388 Utrecht - Dordrecht Arriva

Besides of regular public transport, a number of international bus companies serves Netherlands.

Norway
Norway has long-distance bus routes within the country. They operate in barely inhabited areas, including mountains, and affect the construction of a comprehensive railway network. Except in the Oslo area, Norway has only a rather sparse rail network, which extends north of the Arctic Circle to Fauske and Bodø, and to the north of Narvik with a connection to the Swedish rail network. Many of the routes are based on random railways. In addition to this network, they provide public passenger transport by many more companies within Norway than airlines, shipping lines (including the Hurtigruten) and bus lines, including many long-distance bus lines.

The buses used in the north of the country (especially in the county of Finnmark) have both a passenger compartment and a freight compartment in the rear: many remote villages are connected to the outside world only by these buses, thus achieving a large part of the cargo by bus to the city.

Switzerland
Switzerland has an extremely dense network of interconnected rail, bus and ship lines, including some long-distance bus lines. Although Switzerland is a mountainous country, the rail network is denser than Germany's. Switzerland is an exception to the rule that long-distance bus lines are established especially in countries with inadequate railway network, or in areas with low population density. Some of the railway and main bus routes on Italian territory also serve to shorten the distance between Swiss towns. From Germany lines run from Frankfurt am Main, Heidelberg, Karlsruhe to Basel and Lucerne.

Long-distance bus services in Switzerland:
 * Saas-Fee - Brig - Simplon Pass - Domodossola ("Napoleon Route" a rail connection to Locarno)
 * Lugano - Menaggio on Lake Como - Tirano rail connection to St. Moritz and Chur
 * St. Moritz - Chiavenna - Menaggio on Lake Como - Lugano. ("Palm Express")
 * Chur - Thusis - Splügen GR - San Bernardino GR - Bellinzona
 * Davos - Zernez - Mals (Malle)
 * Disentis / Muster - Bellinzona
 * Flüelen - Andermatt - Airolo - Bellinzona

United Kingdom
There is an extensive network of scheduled coach transport in the United Kingdom. However, passenger numbers are a fraction of those travelling by rail. Coach travel companies often require passengers to purchase tickets in advance of travel, that is they may not be bought on board. The distinction between bus and coach services is not absolute, and some coach services, especially in Scotland, operate as local bus services over sections of route where there is no other bus service. National Express Coaches has operated services under that name since 1972. Megabus started in 2004 and Greyhound UK in 2009. There are many other operators. Receipts in 2004 were £1.8 billion (2008 prices) and grew significantly between 1980 and 2010. Ulsterbus connect places in Northern Ireland which are no longer on the railway network.

Former Yugoslavia
Intercity bus travel in Serbia, as well as in other countries of former Yugoslavia, is very popular in proportion to travel by rail and air. In some regions, data has shown that intercity bus routes have transported over ten times the number of passengers carried by intercity trains on the same competing routes. It has been a trend around Serbia and the Balkan region that small towns and some villages have their own flagship bus carrier, often branded with the last name of the family whose owner runs that bus company. Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, and Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, have very large central bus terminals that operate 24 hours a day. The largest intercity bus operator in the whole region is Lasta Beograd which operates from Serbia to many countries in Europe.

title: Intercity bus service


text:
FontForge

FontForge is a FOSS font editor which supports many common font formats. Developed primarily by George Williams until 2012, FontForge is free software and is distributed under a mix of the GNU General Public License Version 3 and the 3-clause BSD license. It is available for operating systems including Linux, Windows, and macOS, and is localized into 12 languages.

To facilitate automated format conversion and other repetitive tasks, FontForge implements two scripting languages: its own language and Python. FontForge can run scripts from its GUI, from the command line, and also offers its features as a Python module, so it can be integrated into any Python program.

FontForge supports Adobe's OpenType feature file specification (with its own extensions to the syntax). It also supports the unofficial Microsoft mathematical typesetting extensions ( table) introduced for Cambria Math and supported by Office 2007, XeTeX and LuaTeX. At least one free OpenType mathematical font has been developed in FontForge.

FontForge uses FreeType for rendering fonts on screen. Since the November 15, 2008 release, FontForge uses libcairo and libpango software libraries for graphics and text rendering, providing anti-aliased graphics and complex text layout support.

FontForge can use Potrace or AutoTrace to auto trace bitmap images and import them into a font.

Parts of FontForge's code are used by the LuaTeX typesetting engine for reading and parsing OpenType fonts.

The FontForge source code includes a number of utility programs, including 'showttf', which shows the contents of binary font files, and a WOFF converter and deconverter.

Supported formats
FontForge supports a wide variety of font formats. Its native Spline Font Database format ( file name extension) is text-based and facilitates collaboration between designers, as difference files can be easily created. FontForge also supports the interoperable UFO source format, which is based on XML.

The software supports many other font formats and converts fonts from one format to another. Supported font formats include: TrueType (TTF), TrueType Collection (TTC), OpenType (OTF), PostScript Type 1, TeX Bitmap Fonts, X11 OTB bitmap (only sfnt), Glyph Bitmap Distribution Format (BDF), FON (Windows), FNT (Windows), and Web Open Font Format (WOFF). FontForge also imports and exports fonts to and from the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) format and the Unified Font Object (UFO) format.

Development history
The FontForge project was founded by George Williams as a retirement project, and initially published from 2001 to March 2004 as PfaEdit.

Williams actively developed, maintained and supported the program and related utilities for around 12 years. In mid-2011, Dave Crossland began contributing to the project and the project moved from SourceForge to GitHub. Crossland began offering introductory type design workshops through the TeX Users Group (TUG) to raise funds to hire contract developers to maintain and develop the program. FontForge's development became more active, and Khaled Hosny and Barry Schwartz were notable contributors, but in late 2012 they and Crossland disagreed about the direction of the project so they forked FontForge as SortsMill Tools.

In 2011, FontForge was packaged for easier installation on Mac OS X by Dr. Ben Martin with support from TUG. Meanwhile, Matthew Petroff published his Windows Build System and unofficial Windows builds. In 2013, the FontForgeBuilds project was started on SourceForge to extend this; it was subsequently entirely rewritten, and is today maintained by Jeremy Tan as a Windows application.

In 2012, Crossland organized a new project website to be hosted on GitHub Pages, https://fontforge.github.io, and used funds raised from teaching FontForge to beginners to hire a contract web designer. With his support Martin added a real time collaboration feature that was presented by them both as a keynote at the Libre Graphics Meeting 2013 in Madrid.

In 2014, with financial support from Google, Frank Trampe added full support for the UFO font source format.

Fonts developed with FontForge

 * Amiri (typeface)
 * Asana-Math
 * Cantarell (typeface)
 * DejaVu fonts
 * GNU FreeFont,(Free UCS Outline Fonts)
 * Inconsolata
 * Junicode
 * Linux Libertine
 * M+ FONTS
 * OCR-A (recreation in 2004)
 * Squarish Sans
 * XITS font project

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: FontForge


text: User talk:67.18.109.218

title: User talk:67.18.109.218


text:
Khecarī mudrā

 (Sanskrit, खेचरी मुद्रा) is a hatha yoga practice carried out by curling the tip of the tongue back into the mouth until it reaches above the soft palate and into the nasal cavity. The tongue is made long enough to do this with many months of daily tongue stretching and, in some versions of the practice, by gradually severing the frenulum of the tongue with a sharp implement over a period of months.

The goal is to attain liberation in the body, by sealing in the energy of bindu in the head so that it is not lost.

Context
Haṭha yoga is a branch of the largely spiritual practice of yoga, though it makes use of physical techniques; it was developed in medieval times, much later than the meditative and devotional forms of yoga. Its goals however are similar: siddhis or magical powers, and mukti, liberation. In Haṭha yoga, liberation was often supposed to be attainable in the body, made immortal through the practices of Haṭha yoga. Among its techniques were mudrās, meant to seal in or control energies such as kundalini and bindu. Khecarī mudrā is one such technique.

Mudrā

In the beginning stages and for most practitioners, the tip of the tongue touches the soft palate as far back as possible without straining, or is placed in contact with the uvula at the back of the mouth. Mudrā (Sanskrit, मुद्रा, literally "seal"), when used in yoga, is a position intended to awaken spiritual energies in the body.

The Buddhist Pali canon contains three passages in which the Buddha describes pressing the tongue against the palate for the purposes of controlling hunger or the mind, depending on the passage.

A hatha yoga text, the Khecarīvidyā, states that khechari mudrā enables one to raise Kundalini and access various stores of amrita in the head, which subsequently flood the body. The god Shiva, in the same text, gives instructions on how to cut the lingual frenulum as a necessary prerequisite for the khechari mudra practice:

"He should take a very sharp, well-oiled and clean blade resembling a leaf of the Snuhī plant and then cut away a hair's breadth [of the lingual frenulum] with it. After cutting, he should rub the cut with a powder of rock salt and black myrobalan. After seven days he should again cut away a hair's breadth ... After six months the binding tendon at the base of the tongue is destroyed ... Then, in six [more] months, after regular drawing out of the tongue, my dear, it reaches between the eyebrows ... Licking with his tongue the supreme nectar of immortality [amrita] flowing there ... the yogi should drink ... and with a body as incorruptible as diamond, lives for 100,000 years."

A tantric Saiva text, the Mālinīvijayottaratantra, warns:

"[If] his mouth fills with a slightly salty liquid that smells of iron then he should not drink it but spit it out. He should practice thus until [the liquid] becomes sweet-tasting."

Cutting the lingual frenulum can be dangerous, resulting in the loss of tongue mobility. Many practitioners deem it unnecessary.

Bhattacharyya defines as the "Yogic posture which bestows spiritual attainment and enables one to overcome disease and death." He explains that "Kha denotes brahman, and that power which moves (cara) as the kinetic energy of brahman is known (as) Khecarī." Singh defines as "the bliss of the vast expanse of spiritual consciousness, also known as divya mudrā or Śivāvasthā (the state of Śivā)." He further identifies it in a higher sense—with the end state of consciousness, and not just the physical posture used to achieve that end: "So Khecarī Mudrā in Śaiva āgama means a state of universal consciousness which is the state of Śiva." Abhinavagupta, in his Tantraloka, states that all other mudras derive from khecarī mudrā, which he describes as "the stance of moving or flying through the void of the supreme consciousness." The practice is also mentioned in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika (III. 6–7).

In recent times, khecarī mudrā was taught by Paramahansa Yogananda to augment Kriya Yoga practice. He stated that:

"Through the performance of Kechari Mudra, touching the tip of the tongue to the uvula, or "little tongue," (or placing it in the nasal cavity behind the uvula), that divine life-current draws the prana from the senses into the spine and directs it up through the chakras to Vaishvanara (Universal Spirit), uniting the consciousness with spirit."

In Yogananda's commentary on the Bhagavad Gita, he says that khecarī mudrā should be practiced only as instructed by one's guru.

According to Kriyananda, "The assumption of this mudra helps to hasten the advent of deep spiritual states of consciousness." Sivananda described as "the best of all Mudras."

title: Khecarī mudrā


text:
Percy and Florence Arrowsmith

Percy George Arrowsmith (13 March 1900 – 15 June 2005) and Florence Mary "Flo" Dallimore (31 October 1904 – 9 April 2007) were, until Percy's death, a long time married couple residing in Hereford, England.

Life
On 1 June 2005, they erroneously made it into Guinness World Records for the longest marriage for a living couple and the oldest aggregate age of a married couple. They had been married for 80 years, having married in Hereford in 1925, three years after they met.

However, the Le Monde newspaper revealed that one couple in France was even older together and married for a longer time than the Arrowsmiths: André Léon Alphonse Debry (15 June 1898 - 31 August 2005) and Marguerite Céline Pingaud (10 October 1904 - 16 January 2006) wed on 12 August 1924 and celebrated their 81st wedding anniversary in August 2005 shortly before the husband's death.

Percy died only exactly two weeks later on at age 105 and Florence followed almost two years afterwards at age 102.

title: Percy and Florence Arrowsmith


text: File:Pattern recognition (book cover).jpg


text:
Talk:Apache Ant

Limitations
I firmly believe the neutrality warning at the head of this section is inappropriate, damaging to the cause of furthering knowledge and should be removed. We must distinguish between irrational bias: the unbalanced or disingenuous presentation of evidence or a misrepresentation of facts; and bias where a choice is based on facts. For example: Am I being biased if I favour a hard, rugged head protection in a construction site over a baseball cap for protection? That is an extreme example to make my point that showing a propensity based on evidence is not necessarily an opinionated bias that we must always avoid. In this case, the author makes legitimate criticisms based on evidence. These have been balanced by the discussion on the purpose and function of ant in the remainder of the article. It would be a tragedy to remove the considerations listed here for the sake of blindly following a rule. To consider removing these limitations from publication would be to lose sight of the spirit of the rule on neutrality. In short, listing valid, legitimate limitations based on evidence or facts is not necessarily a breach of neutrality. To blindly remove accurate criticisms as a result of not properly appreciating the point of a rule, would make the knowledge landscape a poorer place for us all. Please think and do not lose sight of the point and purpose of rules. I hope that makes sense but am happy to elaborate if necessary. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 163.171.8.4 (talk) 09:45, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

The last point in "Limitations" is not really NPOV anymore. (Although it may be true.) Especially the last sentence doesn't seem to fit into Wikipedia's style very well. (Btw, what are you trying to say with that? What should we use instead of Java? In what language/environment is development not excessively complex?) --Jonik 19:54, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

 * Yes, it is clearly from an unhappy user. What should be done about it? I think it could be rewritten slightly to be more unbiased, the main thing being make it a fact, rather than a limitation. artifact-driven build tools need to know about all the artifacts, where ant works on entire trees of files. Both have strength's and weaknesses. SteveLoughran 21:39, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

 * When you say "the last one" might want to specify which one because I added my comment after the most current last. I figured out which one you were talking about bit considering these bullets may change... --Ilyathemuromets 16:57, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

There are 2 points in "Limitations" that are not limitations, they are really just complaints of someone with apparently different preferences. To wit:
 * Ant targets don't map to artifacts.  This does not limit the ability to determine if artifacts are up to date.   It just means that the mechanism for doing so is different.   It is not a limitation merely because you prefer a different set of usability tradeoffs.
 * Ant properties can't be changed.  This  makes builds more repeatable and reliable because one never knows in what order targets will be run.   Again, not a limitation, merely personal preference about what constitutes a valuable design tradeoff.

In short, there are valid and conscious reasons for these design choices. Noncompliance with your personal level of comfort does not constitute a limitation to everyone else. 174.47.62.3 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 20:26, 19 March 2012 (UTC).

 * I'd agree that there are "valid and conscious reasons" for both of these. The arbitrary nature of targets I'd be inclined to see as more of a feature than a bug. Immutability of properties though is a complete pain in the ant (as so often happens, a "functional" approach in a language that isn't a full-blown functional language makes for a nasty piece of work to get anything done with). This is one of the major factors in particular that cause typical Ant buildfiles to become verbose. Given the space dedicated in Steve's book to work-arounds for it, I'm sure that could act as a ref for at least some people considering this to be "a limitation".
 * I don't care how either of these are described. However they should both still be described, which is why I reverted their deletion. Whether something is a limitation or not, the fact that it's a difference in behaviour from other comparable systems is an aspect worth recording. Andy Dingley (talk) 20:50, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Multi-day build?

 * Ant has limited fault handling rules, and no persistence of state, so it cannot be safely used to manage a multi-day build.

What's a multi-day build, aside from the obvious "a build that lasts more than 24 hours", which is probably not just what is meant? I don't have experience with tremendously big projects, so I'm wondering what the benefit would be of a build process that periodically stops. At least, I'm assuming that's what this is about, if persistence of state is required.

In short, could someone explain what this is about? Also, what build tools do have persistence of state? Ant was primarily designed to replace the platform-dependent "make" and associated tasks, which don't have persistence of state either, unless you go to some trouble to make intermediaries represent "state" rather than "crap that was left behind when I interrupted the build". 82.92.119.11 22:00, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

 * It was probably me that wrote this; it reads like it. if you want printed backup, you could cite Ant in Action or Java Development with Ant, but of course being the author of both, its not that neutral.

 * Multi-day build. We, the ant team, place priority on having things work consistently over eliminating memory leaks; indeed, some of the things that Ant runs (javac) can leak memory. If builds are short lived, say 10 seconds or even 30 minutes, memory leaks are less important. Now that Ant gets embedded in most Java IDEs, memory leaks show up faster...the eclipse team have been good at profiling Ant and providing feedback. But if ever the team had to choose between 'works well' and 'leaks memory slowly over time', we'd choose working.

 * the persistence of state thing stems from the fact that too many people try using Ant as a workflow tool. GridAnt is one example, but there are others. They use ant to start programs. run long tests and generally try and manage long-lived apps. People are free to do that but its not a core use of the tool. The big problems are -does it remember where it was?, and -how well does it handle failure. Ant's world view is builds either work, or they don't. But workflows often have 'try this, back off, try something else' logic, and ant does not -and will not- make this easy.

 * So no, no other build tools have these attributes. They shouldn't be used for workflow either. Edited the text to make Workflow more explicit. SteveLoughran 21:14, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

make and rm
The rm example in the part about make's non-portability is a bit unfortunate — GNU make and other makes provide $(RM), so it becomes make's, not the users, problem to find a suitable tool for deleting stuff. I never invoke rm(1) directly in my files (but tend to have other, less general things invoked by make). JöG 19:12, 28 September 2006 (UTC)

Weasel
"This ant task has the same name as the common java command-line utility, but is really a call to the ant program's predefined library. Most likely, this function in turn then calls the command-line utility behind the scenes, as is true of many of ant's tasks."

What does that even mean? Either it does or it does not make a call to the CLI. Since it is open source, it should be possible to clarify this point.82.10.159.229 22:13, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

 * It means whoever wrote the para didn't look in the source, or ask the dev team. Ant has its own zip file classes that we think are better than Sun's as they can read and write the unix file permissions, and handle duplicate entries. Fixed the paragraph and added some examples where Ant really does call out. Note that some tasks, i.e can call libraries in-VM, , external java program , or external native app . There's a helper class for every compiler that sets up the appropriate program, so developers can switch just by naming a different compiler. SteveLoughran 21:19, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

What does Ant do??
I know "make" well, and have been trying to learn "ant". I could describe the heart of make in 3-4 sentences - its targets depend upon other files and it uses time stamps to avoid unnecessary builds. All I've found about ant is that it works well with Java, and it incorporates platform independence by piggybacking on Java's system call classes. I believe it could implement something like classic make with dependsets and if or unless tests, but I'm not sure it can handle individual file compiles without matching individual targets. I suspect I may be missing the river looking for trees and perhaps ant isn't designed for build avoidance. Be that as it may, this article would be improved by:

1. explaining what ant does that allows it to work effectively with Java

2. explain how it is intended to be used...

70.181.110.223 (talk) 07:58, 6 January 2009 (UTC)

 * Once upon a time, compilers compiled a source file. They compiled one file and they needed all of that file's dependencies to be in place first. They were tiresome to use.
 * So "classic" make appeared. It used an explicitly written makefile to record human-defined dependencies between components. Then it invoked the compiler for each file in turn, in the order required by the makefile. Sometimes, after some human effort, this was an order capable of building the overall set of files. Often it wasn't and the makefile had to be adjusted manually.
 * This was a nuisance. So compilers became smarter, started to work out their own dependencies between source files, and could then be invoked just once to compile a whole set of files.
 * Make was no longer needed for its original purpose. As it had become useful for other things too, it still hung around. Makefiles were also being used to handle procedural tasks like "compile this, then copy it over there". Some people used shell scripts instead, which were perhaps better at the procedural stuff, but didn't have an inherent ability to understand dependencies.
 * Ant (and others) were produced to do this better. They abandoned the original need of make (to manage dependencies between source files) as the compilers were already doing that perfectly well. They enhanced the management of the procedural side. Most importantly, Ant understands dependencies. It doesn't do dependencies between files (its tasks do that fine within themselves) but it does have freely definable, mutually inter-dependent "targets" within the buildfile and Ant understands how to linearise the graph of these dependencies and make sense of it, executing the tasks needed and in a correct order. Then it takes a verbose great buildfile to do so!
 * Maven does much the same - but Maven does it by using an implicit invisible buildfile that only Maven and Maven mavens can see. Maven's dependencies work by arcane rules of 'convention not configuration', so Maven always knows what it's going to do itself, but developers using it dont. Newbies are OK, because simple projects are simple. Experts are OK, because theyve already memorised the invisible buildfile. With Ant though, almost anyone can take a pre-existing buildfile and read it to understand whats going on, even if they wouldnt liek to set it up for themselves. Most Maven projects just stick with the default structures, or lack of structure, because if anyone tries to improve it, Maven stops working and no one then understands how to fix it. Viam Ferream (talk) 09:10, 3 September 2014 (UTC)

How is the latest stable release retrieved?
Is it retrieved manually or automatically?

According to http://ant.apache.org it is "1.8.0" and it was released "February 8, 2010".

--Volphy (talk) 14:59, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

I think somebody made a mistake and thought, that Apache Ivy is Ant (which it is not). I will revert to Version 1.8.0

--C.Oezbek (talk) 15:30, 1 March 2010 (UTC)

I know this has been said before but, Limitations?
If XML is a limitation to makefiles, there's something wrong with you. (I know this is my viewpoint, but this is like a speech from Mitt Romney) --Stijn Brouwer (talk) 13:18, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

 * "XML is bad because I can't work the syntax" is certainly a bad, albeit common, argument.
 * "Ant's XML is less terse than Maven" though does have some basis. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:26, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

 * Good point. See whether my 2014-01-03 edit successfully addresses your complaint. -AlanUS (talk) 16:58, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Release History
It would be nice if the Ant release history would be documented here, like Ernstdehaan (talk) 08:48, 11 October 2013 (UTC)
 * Ant 1.1 was release on date …
 * Ant 1.8.2 was released on date …
 * Ant 1.9.0 was released on date …
 * Ant 1.9.1 was released on date …
 * Ant 1.9.2 was released on date …
 * etc.
 * etc.

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Cross-platform ... again
Hello.

There is a big problem with the word "cross-platform"; it is a weasel word. I have said a lot before, but I would like to impress upon everyone here how grave the problem is. Weasel words give zero information because their description is so broadly correct that you might as well not have that description.

Virtually, you can pick any computer program and call it cross-platform. For example:
 * Most Android apps are written using Java for Android VM. In that sense, they are uniplatform. But you can claim they are cross-platform because they run on both ARM and x86.
 * Most 32-bit Windows apps are written against Windows API. In that sense, they are uniplatform. But you can claim they are cross-platform because they run on IA-32 and x64 CPUs. In reality, Windows Server might not run them, if its WoW64 subsystem is not installed.
 * Most Java SE apps can be claimed to be cross-platform because the Java SE runtime is available for Windows, macOS and Linux. But in reality, they are written against one platform alone.

Calling a program "cross-platform" is one problem, inserting it into the operating system field of the infobox is another. There is no operating system called "cross-platform". And if a program is written for Java SE 9, it does not run on Windows XP. So, inserting it into the operating system field of the infobox isn't just giving zero information; it is also giving potentially wrong information. Add the fact that there are no binary versions of Apache Ant. (I checked, but please correct me if I am wrong.) That means running it on Windows is a Herculean task of its own merit; not every nine-year-old kid could do it.

Finally, there is one matter. I only wrote this thread, because I felt obliged to respond to an act of good faith in kind. In revision 818096430, 2600:1005:b04a:9f8:e005:aef6:666a:aad7 went an extra mile to provide a source for the cross-platform claim. So, I felt obliged to write this. However Wikipedia requires everything written to have a source, but does write not everything that a given source says. We have other requirements too. (I was talking about one all along: WP:WTA.) Also, I did check the IP address's geolocation data. I am not saying more right now, except that if the IP editor plays fair, I will play fair. (Hint: A blanket revert that brings back four typos and causes inconsistency isn't exactly playing fair.)

Best regards, Codename Lisa (talk) 16:43, 1 January 2018 (UTC)

title: Talk:Apache Ant


text:
University of Houston–Victoria

The University of Houston–Victoria (UHV) is a public university in Victoria, Texas. It is part of the University of Houston System. Its campus spans 20 acres in Victoria with a satellite location in Katy, Texas. Founded in 1971, UHV has an enrollment of over 4,300 students.

History
The University of Houston–Victoria began as an effort in the late 1960s by the local community to bring a higher learning institution to Victoria. In 1971, the Coordinating Board of Texas College and University System created an off-campus center of the University of Houston known as the University of Houston Victoria Center. One hundred students enrolled at the center in its inaugural semester of spring 1973.

In April 1983, the Texas legislature passed Senate Bill 235, which granted the institution permanent degree-granting status in the state of Texas. The University of Houston Victoria Center was renamed the university of Houston–Victoria, and became the University of Houston System's fourth university.

UHV started its athletics program during the 2007–2008 school year with the Jaguars baseball and softball team. Since then, the teams have competed in the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics. Soccer and golf programs for both men and women began in fall 2010.

In October 2008, the UH System Board of Regents adopted a resolution authorizing UHV to seek enabling state legislation to add freshmen and sophomores. In the 81st Texas legislative session, Texas State Representative Geanie Morrison of Victoria introduced House Bill 1056, which would allow UHV to expand, and Texas State Senator Glenn Hegar introduced an identical bill, Senate Bill 567. Texas Governor Rick Perry signed HB 1056 into law on June 19, 2009. The Southern Association of Colleges and Schools approved UHV to admit underclassmen and offer lower-division courses on November 17, 2009, and UHV also received its first freshman application the same day. UHV's first freshmen and sophomores started taking classes in fall 2010, and the university's first residence hall, Jaguar Hall, opened on the Victoria campus.

Institutional structure
The University of Houston–Victoria (UHV) is one of four separate and distinct institutions in the University of Houston System. The institution is separately accredited, offers its own academic programs and confers its own degrees, and has its own administration. UHV is a stand-alone university; it is not a branch campus of the University of Houston (UH). Although UHV and UH are both component institutions of the University of Houston System, they are separate degree-granting universities.

The organization and control of the University of Houston–Victoria is vested in the board of regents of the University of Houston System. The board has all the rights, powers, and duties that it has with respect to the organization and control of other institutions in the System; however, UHV is maintained as a separate and distinct institution.

Administration
The president is the chief executive officer of the University of Houston–Victoria, and the position reports to the chancellor of the University of Houston System. The president is appointed by the chancellor and confirmed by the board of regents of the University of Houston System. Since April 21, 2015, Dr. Vic Morgan has served as the interim president.

 * Reginald Taylor, 1972–1978
 * Robert C. Maxson, 1978–1982
 * Martha K. Piper, 1982–1986
 * Glenn A. Goerke, 1986–1991
 * Don N. Smith (interim), 1991–1992
 * Lesta Van Der Wert Turchen, 1992–1995
 * Karen S. Haynes, 1995–2004
 * Don N. Smith (interim), 2004
 * Tim Hudson, 2004–2010
 * Don N. Smith (interim), 2010-2011
 * Philip D. Castille, 2011–2014
 * Raymond V. Morgan, Jr., 2014–2018
 * Robert (Bob) K. Glenn, 2018–present

Academics

The University of Houston–Victoria (UHV) is separately accredited, offers its own academic programs, and confers its own degrees. UHV is a stand-alone university; it is not a branch campus of the University of Houston (UH). Although UHV and UH are both component institutions of the University of Houston System, they are separate degree-granting universities. Students who graduate from UHV will have diplomas under the name University of Houston–Victoria.

While previously an upper-division and graduate school only, UHV expanded in fall 2010 to admit freshmen and sophomores. UHV consists of four academic colleges: the School of Arts & Sciences, the School of Business Administration, the School of Education & Human Development, and the School of Nursing. Each school offers both undergraduate degrees and master's degrees.

College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences
The College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences offers flexible course scheduling through online classes and off-site courses, in addition to the traditional on-campus classes. The College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences offers a range of programs in the divisions of Humanities; Social & Behavioral Sciences. The College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences offers bachelor's and master's degrees.

College of Business
The University of Houston–Victoria's College of Business offers face-to-face or 100% online degree programs. The College of Business offers bachelor's and master's degrees.

College of Education & Human Development
The College of Education & Human Development offers both undergraduate and graduate degrees. The undergraduate degree is for those seeking elementary, middle and secondary teaching careers or a career in health studies as a public health educator.

College of Natural and Applied Science
The College of Natural and Applied Science offers both undergraduate and graduate degrees. The undergraduate degree is for those seeking elementary, middle and secondary teaching careers or a career in health studies as a public health educator.

Faculty
Currently, the university has an 18-to-1 ratio and an average class size of 20 students. Instructors come from Canada, China, Colombia, Cuba, Belarus, India, Iran, Jordan, Kenya, Korea, Mexico, Russia, Taiwan and Thailand.

Honor societies with UHV chapters include Phi Kappa Phi, Gamma Beta Phi, Chi Sigma Iota, Psi Chi and Kappa Delta Pi.

Degree in Three
UHV was the first Texas public university to offer an accelerated program where students can earn a complete, 120-credit-hour bachelor's degree in just three years. Degree in Three, or Dn3, lets students earn a degree in communication, criminal justice, English, history or psychology.

Campus

The campus of UHV is located in Victoria, which is part of the Texas Coastal Bend region. It is approximately 30 miles (48 km) from the Gulf of Mexico. The university is nearly equidistant by about 125 miles (201 km) from the cities of Houston, San Antonio and Austin. The Victoria campus consists of about 20 acres (81,000 m2) of land.

The Victoria campus shares some of its facilities with Victoria College. This includes a bookstore/student center, a three-story library with more than 185,000 items in their collection and a fitness center that includes a gym and weight room.

UHV Katy
For years, the University of Houston - Victoria offered classes in Cinco Ranch and the Department of Business and Education in the facilities of Houston Community College - Katy Campus. Eventually a whole floor was used by the university in a different shared building (not HCC), north of I-10 and off Grand Parkway US 99. The University of Houston–Victoria opened the Katy campus in University Park, in a new building.

Student life
Jaguar Village consists of three residence halls: Jaguar Hall, Jaguar Suites and Jaguar Court.

Jaguar Hall also has an on-site dining room and is located a short, 10-minute walk to the UHV campus.

The university opened its second residential hall, Jaguar Court and Jaguar Suites opened in fall 2013 and is the UHV's third residential hall.

Don and Mona Smith Hall is the newest student housing project and will be adjacent to the Student Commons. The $22.8 million, 81,353 square foot building will be a three-story facility which will include 280 beds for sophomores and upper-level students, a large classroom, programming space, reception area, laundry, and common kitchens on every floor.

The Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM) building will be adjacent to the University Center building and directly across from the University North building. The $28 million, 56,464 square foot building will include lab space for biology, physics, chemistry, organic chemistry, computer science, microbiology, computer engineering and mathematics; classrooms, faculty and staff offices, immersive 180 degree screen lab, seminar room, and gathering spaces. The addition of this building allows new degree offerings in educational technology, computer engineering, economics concentration in its BBA, petroleum technology concentration, as well as the ability to add additional programs in the future.

Victoria Town Plaza Mall consists of approximately 10 acres and 124,000 square feet. The proposed site will house 50% of the library collection, Small Business Development Center, Regional Economic Development Center, climate controlled space for records retention and storage, and flex space for academic programs while academic buildings are being designed and constructed. The land will allow for additional parking for students with an added shuttle bus stop.

The University Commons is a $29.5 million project located directly across from the University Center building. The Student Center area will include a bookstore, food court, lounge and game room space, staff office space, and Student Government space, and other amenities. The Learning Commons will include library services, a variety of technologies, private and group study spaces, comfortable and moveable furniture, writing assistance and tutoring.

Athletics
The Houston–Victoria (UHV) athletic teams are called the Jaguars. UHV is one of two University of Houston System member schools with a varsity athletic program. The university is a member of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), primarily competing in the Red River Athletic Conference (RRAC) since the 2015–16 academic year. The Jaguars previously competed as an NAIA Independent within the Association of Independent Institutions (AII) from the school's athletic program's inception in 2007–08 until 2014–15.

UHV competes in six intercollegiate sports: Men's sports include baseball, golf and soccer; while women's sports include golf, soccer and softball. UHV began its intercollegiate athletic program with baseball and softball in 2007–08, followed by men's & women's golf and men's & women's soccer in 2010–11.

Athletic director
Ashley Walyuchow has served as director of athletics since the program's inception in 2006.

Baseball
The Jaguars baseball team won back-to-back Association of Independent Institutions (AII) conference championships (2009 and 2010). The team plays its home games at Riverside Stadium in Victoria, Texas. Head coach Terry Puhl is a former outfielder for the Houston Astros and Kansas City Royals. Puhl also is a Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame and Texas Baseball Hall of Fame inductee, and served as head coach for the Canadian national baseball team in a win over Cuba at the Olympic qualifier in 2006 and at the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Softball
The Jaguars softball team won the first AII conference championship, finished 11th in the nation in 2009 and was ranked 21st in 2010. The Jaguar softball team won its second AII conference title in May 2013. The Jaguars moved on to the opening round of the NAIA national championship where they were defeated by Lubbock Christian University, finishing the season ranked 18th. The team plays its home games at Victoria's Youth Sports Complex located in Victoria, Texas. The Jaguars are coached by Lindsey Ortiz, former player on the first Jaguars team.

Soccer
The Jaguars men's and women's teams began in fall 2010. A soccer field, dubbed "The Cage" by players, was constructed on the UHV campus, and the men's and women's teams hosted the first on-campus home games ever during their fall campaign.

The men's team and women's teams are coached by Adrian Rigby, the teams have seen steady improvement since day one. The men's team won both 2017 RRAC regular season and tournament championships.

Golf
UHV men's and women's golf teams began in fall 2010. The squads practice and host meets at Victoria Country Club and The Club at Colony Creek. Head coach is Christi Cano, former All-American at Oklahoma State University and LPGA tour player.

Notable alumni

 * Van G. Garrett, poet
 * Olivia Julianna, political activist, abortion rights advocate, and strategist
 * Chad Waligura, journalist
 * Alan Weddell, college football coach

title: University of Houston–Victoria


text:
Bruno Dumont

Bruno Dumont (born 14 March 1958) is a French film director and screenwriter. To date, he has directed ten feature films, all of which border somewhere between realistic drama and the avant-garde. His films have won several awards at the Cannes Film Festival. Two of Dumont's films have won the Grand Prix award: both L'Humanité (1999) and Flandres (2006). Dumont's Hadewijch won the 2009 Prize of the International Critics (FIPRESCI Prize) for Special Presentation at the Toronto Film Festival.

Life and career
Dumont has a background of Greek and German (Western) philosophy, and of corporate video. His early films show the ugliness of extreme violence and provocative sexual behavior, and are usually classified as art films. Later films bring novel twists to other movie genres like comedy or musicals. Dumont has himself likened his films to visual arts, and he typically uses long takes, close-ups of people's bodies, and story lines involving extreme emotions. Dumont does not write traditional scripts for his films. Instead, he writes complete novels which are then the basis for his filmmaking.

Dumont is known to cast nonprofessional actors in his films. In a 2019 interview for the Criterion Channel, Dumont explained: "If I believed in the ideal, I'd hire a professional actor, and I'd tell them, 'Act like this because this is the truth. Since I don't believe in the ideal, I hire nonprofessional actors...because I believe that anyone is a holder of the truth." He says that some of his favorite filmmakers are Stanley Kubrick, Ingmar Bergman, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Roberto Rossellini, and Abbas Kiarostami. He is frequently considered an artistic heir to Robert Bresson.

His often polarizing work has been connected to a recent French cinéma du corps/cinema of the body, encompassing contemporary films by Claire Denis, Marina de Van, Gaspar Noé, Diane Bertrand, and François Ozon, among others. According to Tim Palmer, this trajectory includes a focus on states of corporeality in and of themselves, independent of narrative exposition or character psychology. In a more pejorative vein, James Quandt has also talked of some of this group of filmmakers, as the so-called New French Extremity.

His 2011 film Hors Satan premiered in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival. His 2013 film Camille Claudel 1915 premiered in competition at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival.

Dumont is an atheist.

Feature films

 * La vie de Jésus / The Life of Jesus (1997)
 * Humanité / Humanity (1999)
 * Twentynine Palms (2003)
 * Flandres / Flanders (2006)
 * Hadewijch (2009)
 * Hors Satan (2011)
 * Camille Claudel 1915 (2013)
 * P'tit Quinquin / L'il Quinquin (2014)
 * Slack Bay / Ma Loute (2016)
 * Jeannette: The Childhood of Joan of Arc (2017)
 * Coincoin and the Extra-Humans / Coincoin et les z'inhumains (2018)
 * Joan of Arc / Jeanne (2019)
 * France (2021)
 * The Empire (2024)

Short films

 * Paris (1993)
 * P'tit Quinquin / Li'l Quinquin (1993)
 * Marie et Freddy / Marie and Freddy (1994)

Interviews and articles

 * Kinok 14 September 2003
 * Film de Culte (French)
 * Village Voice 30 March 2004
 * Cineuropa 23 May 2006
 * Fluctuat 1 March 2012 (French)
 * Premiere 28 August 2006 (French)
 * Telerama 2 September 2006 (French)
 * DVDrama 24 September 2006 (French)
 * Film de Culte September 2006 (French)
 * Photos of Bruno Dumont from The San Sebastian Film Festival, October 2009

title: Bruno Dumont


text:
Loreto, Zacatecas

Loreto is a town and municipality in the state of Zacatecas, Mexico. The town is the seventh-largest community in the state, with a 2005 census population of 22,085 inhabitants, while the municipality of which it serves as municipal seat had a population of 43,411. The municipality has an area of 427 km² (164.87 sq mi).

People celebrate Nuestra Señora de Loreto from 1 to 10 December. It is an agricultural region where people grow primarily lettuce, corn, chili and beans. This town was founded in 1931 with the name Bimabaletes, and in 1956 its official name changed to Loreto.

It is home to the well known regional band Los 5 de Zacatecas.

Notable people

 * Jesús Aceves, known for having the rare condition hypertrichosis

title: Loreto, Zacatecas


text:
It's Oh So Quiet

"It's Oh So Quiet" is a song by American singer Betty Hutton, released in 1951 as the B-side to the single "Murder, He Says". It is a cover of the German song "Und jetzt ist es still", performed by Horst Winter in 1948, with music written by Austrian composer Hans Lang and German lyrics by Erich Meder. The English lyrics were written by Bert Reisfeld. A French title, "Tout est tranquille", was performed in 1949 by Ginette Garcin and the Jacques Hélian Orchestra.

Icelandic musician Björk covered the song as the third single from her second album Post (1995): it remains her biggest hit, reaching number 4 in the UK and spending 15 weeks on the UK Singles Chart. Fueled by the Spike Jonze-directed music video, the single also shot Björk into the spotlight in Australia, where it reached number 6. In the United Kingdom the single has been certified as Gold, having sold upwards of 400,000 copies.

In 2002, Brittany Murphy made a performance of this song, joined by The Pussycat Dolls. In 2005, Lucy Woodward covered the song for the soundtrack for the film Ice Princess. This version was also used in the second trailer for the 2020 film Birds of Prey. A version of "It's Oh So Quiet" was used in a Maybelline advertisement, and a version by Amanda Fondell was used in an advertisement for Candy Crush Saga. Hutton's version was used in a commercial for the Acura TLX in 2020 and for Facebook in 2021. A version was used in a 2023 Diet Coke commercial. The trailer for Boy Kills World includes the song.

Björk version
The song was covered by Icelandic musician Björk in 1995. It was released by One Little Indian as the third single from her second album, Post (1995) and remains her biggest hit, reaching number four in the UK and spending 15 weeks on the UK Singles Chart. Fueled by the Spike Jonze-directed music video, the single also shot Björk into the spotlight in Australia, where it reached number six. In the United Kingdom the single has been certified as Gold, having sold upwards of 400,000 copies.

Critical reception
James Masterton for Dotmusic said Björk's version of the song "stands out as one of the most bizarre singles she has ever recorded." He described it "as Icelandic pixie meets the sound of Frank Sinatra to almost perfect effect." Alan Jones from Music Week wrote, "Alternating soft and gentle passages with noisy outbursts on which Bjork squawks and is reinforced by an old-fashioned big band section, this is very much a novelty, but one that works and well."

Simon Williams from NME commented in his review of Post, "It happens about a quarter of the way into "It's Oh So Quiet". All is normal in Björkland in terms of mischievous whisperings and wandering noises for the first, ooooh, minute... and then, with nary a mumbled warning, out pours a 20-piece orchestral shriek, the huge scarlet drapes part insolently, and there She is centrestage, gallivanting down the crystallised staircase, shimmying with the choreographed puffins, bellowing through a jazz-tastic wartime standard originally recorded by a Hollywood bombshell of the blonde variety, Betty Hutton, and She is hollering "''You fall in love, ZING BOOM! The sky up above, ZING BOOM! Is caving in, WOW BAM!''"."

Background
The music video, directed by Spike Jonze, was shot in San Fernando Valley, California. It is a homage to Hollywood's Technicolor musicals that drew inspiration from Busby Berkeley and Jacques Demy's The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, as well as Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-liang. Like Demy, Jonze "mines the magical from the mundane," as he transforms a drab auto shop into the location where Björk dances and sings with a full dance company, an attempt to reflect the "exuberance" of her vocal performance. The whispered verse sections of the track are filmed in slow motion, "much as Tsai's cinematography takes place over an extended timeframe"; while the shouted musical sections "reflect back on ordinary or 'lived' reality in a manner that denaturalizes the banal—turning it, more than the fantasy of musical spectacle, into something surreal."

Synopsis
The video begins as Björk emerges from an extremely dirty washroom in an auto shop. She dances along with the auto workers for the first chorus, then emerges from the shop. During the second chorus, she dances tap with a few people outside of the auto shop. Björk continues to walk along the street, dancing with several elderly women and their umbrellas before settling to rest her arms on top of a mailbox for the final verse. The mailbox comes alive and dances along with Björk during this chorus. Björk then runs down the street and into the road, where the rest of the town has decided to join her for one large dance number. The video ends with Björk floating up above the townsfolk and hushing the viewer.

Release
The music video for "It's Oh So Quiet" premiered on MTV during the week ending on August 20, 1995.

Awards and nominations
"It's Oh So Quiet" video received six nominations for the MTV Video Music Awards for 1996 including Best Female Video, Best Art Direction, Breakthrough Video, Best Direction in a Video, International Viewer's Choice Award — MTV Europe, and Best Choreography in a Video, winning in the latter category. The video was also nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Music Video - Short Form, losing to "Scream" by Michael Jackson and his sister Janet. In October 2007, MuchMoreMusic placed "It's Oh So Quiet" as number 8 of the Top 40 Most Memorable Music Videos on Listed.

Track listings

 * UK CD1
 * 1) "It's Oh So Quiet"
 * 2) "You've Been Flirting Again" (Flirt Is a Promise Mix)
 * 3) "Hyperballad" (Over the Edge Mix)
 * 4) "Sweet Sweet Intuition"

 * UK CD2, Australian and Japanese CD single
 * 1) "It's Oh So Quiet"
 * 2) "Hyperballad" (Brodsky Quartet version)
 * 3) "Hyperballad" (Girls Blouse Mix)
 * 4) "My Spine"

 * UK and Australian cassette single, European CD single
 * 1) "It's Oh So Quiet"
 * 2) "You've Been Flirting Again" (Flirt Is a Promise Mix)

 * US CD and cassette single
 * 1) "It's Oh So Quiet"
 * 2) "You've Been Flirting Again" (Icelandic mix)

title: It's Oh So Quiet