Mar 13, 2023

Towards automated PDF tagging: Pre-release of LaTeX 2023-06-01 is available for testing

We submitted the second pre-release version for the 2023-06-01 LaTeX kernel to CTAN recently. It should have made its way into TeX Live (both 2022 and the 2023 pre-test) for everyone by now, so it’s ready for users to try.

It does not yet contain all updates to the LaTeX format that will become part of the standard in June, but the new code already provided is worth checking out.

Automated tagging of PDF documents

We have now enabled new automatic tagging functionality for additional LaTeX elements, among them most display environments, standard sectioning commands and content, figure and table listings.

This can be activated through

\DocumentMetadata{testphase=phase-III}
\documentclass{...}                     % article, book or report

In addition there is also a (very early) prototype for tagging formulas, which can be activated through

\DocumentMetadata{testphase={phase-III,math}}
\documentclass{...}

It offers support for LaTeX’s standard math environments but also for all environments provided through the amsmath package.

All of this automation is currently in a prototype state and restricted to the use of standard classes (article, report, and book) and it supports only a limited number of add-on package. See the draft version of the LaTeX2e News Issue 37 newsletter for further details. It provides information how to submit feedback on the new functionality.

The newsletter also covers various other small enhancements or corrections that we intend to provide with the June release.

Outlook

We expect to produce another pre-release around the end of April, which will give us time to finish the release by June. Please help with the testing.

Processing your documents with the pre-release is straightforward. All you have to do is to replace the invocation command by appending -dev to the executable, e.g., on the command line you would run

  • pdflatex-dev myfile or
  • lualatex-dev myfile or
  • xelatex-dev myfile

instead of using pdflatex, lualatex or xelatex. If you use an integrated editing environment, then it depends on the system how to configure it to use an alternative format; but in any case the necessary modification should be straightforward.

Enjoy — Frank