Publications in 2022

From the PDF days Europe, September 2022 (Berlin)

Tagged and Accessible PDF with LaTeX – project state, achievements, and plans for the future

• Frank Mittelbach and Ulrike Fischer
• Video of the talk presented at PDF Days Europe September 2022
• Keywords: LaTeX, tagging, accessibility, project status
• Abstract

  In Summer 2020 the LaTeX Project Team announced the start of a multi-year project [1, 2] to produce tagged and accessible PDF from existing LaTeX sources with no or only minimal configuration adjustments. In this talk we describe the current state of the project, the existing achievements, and our plans for future.

  References

  [1] Frank Mittelbach, Ulrike Fischer, and Chris Rowley: LaTeX Tagged PDF Feasibility Evaluation Study. LaTeX Project, Sept. 2020. [2] Frank Mittelbach and Chris Rowley: LaTeX Tagged PDF — A blueprint for a large project. TUGboat 41(3):292–298, 2020.

The talk was recorded and is available on the PDFA website. The slides of the presentation are available here.

The LaTeX Tagged PDF project — A status and progress report

• Frank Mittelbach and Ulrike Fischer
• TUGboat 43:3, 2022
• Keywords: LaTeX, tagging, accessibility, project status
• Abstract

  The LaTeX Tagged PDF project was started in spring 2020 and announced to the TeX community by the LaTeX Team at the (online) 2020 TUG conference. This short report describes the progress and status of this multi-year project.

Adding XMP metadata in LaTeX

• Ulrike Fischer and Frank Mittelbach
• TUGboat 43:3, 2022
• Keywords: LaTeX, tagging, accessibility, XMP metadata
• Abstract

  One task of the “LaTeX Tagged PDF Project” is to evaluate existing solutions to add XMP metadata to a PDF, and if needed, to design and implement a new standard interface for this. In this article we will describe the current state of this task.

Mapping to individual characters in expl3

• Joseph Wright
• TUGboat 43:3, 2022

A short note on the complexity handling characters and the way the LaTeX programming layer handles them.

Using spot colors in LaTeX

• Ulrike Fischer
• TUGboat 43:2, 2022
• Keywords: LaTeX, spotcolor
• Abstract

  In this paper I recount some practical experiences with spot colors we gained while working on the third edition of The LaTeX Companion. I describe what spot colors are, how to use them for text and (TikZ) graphics, how to mix them properly, and some of the pitfalls we found and how we worked around them.

Key–value setting handling in the LaTeX kernel

• Joseph Wright
• TUGboat 43:2, 2022

This paper describes the new kernel mechanism to handle package and class options using key–value methods introduced in release 2022-06-01.

A video on “Key-value setting handling in the kernel (2022)” as presented by Joseph at the TUG conference is also available.

Case changing: LaTeX reaches Unicode-land

• Joseph Wright
• TUGboat 43:2, 2022
• Abstract:

  The concept of letters having case is familiar to speakers of several languages, most obviously those from Europe using Latin, Greek or Cyrillic scripts. The ability to convert between upper and lower case, case changing, is something we might take for granted both for people and for computer systems. However, there are subtleties that a careful implementation needs to take into account…

This paper describes the new kernel mechanisms to manage this complexity.

A video on “Case changing: LaTeX reaches Unicode-land (2022)” as presented by Joseph at the TUG conference is also available.

TUG Conference 2022 (Online conference)

New in stock — recent LaTeX improvements (that you may have missed)

• Ulrike Fischer
• Video of the TUG 2022 online conference
• Keywords: LaTeX, features, improvements
• Abstract

  In this talk I present a selection of improvement we made in the recent LaTeX releases. The changes are not discussed in depth; the goal is to give some interesting examples and make you curious enough to explore the documentation and learn more.

Using spot colors with LaTeX

• Ulrike Fischer
• Video of the TUG 2022 online conference
• Keywords: LaTeX, spot color
• Abstract

  In this talk I recount some practical experiences with spot colors I gained while working on the third edition of The LaTeX Companion. I describe what spot colors are, how to use them for text and (Ti_k_Z) graphics, how to mix them properly, and some of the pitfalls we found and how we worked around them.

Key-value setting handling in the kernel

• Joseph Wright
• Video of the TUG 2022 online conference
• Keywords: LaTeX, key/value handling
• Abstract

  LaTeX2ε introduced class and package setting in the optional arguments to \documentclass and \usepackage. To date, these were designed to handle simple keyword-based option. Over time, packages have extended the mechanism to accept key-value (keyval) arguments. Recent work by the team brings keyval handling into the kernel. This brings the added benefit of allowing repeated package loading to avoid clashes. Here, I will look briefly at the background, then explore how to use the new mechanism in package development.

Case changing: LaTeX reaches Unicode-land

• Joseph Wright
• Video of the TUG 2022 online conference
• Keywords: LaTeX, Unicode, case changing
• Abstract

  In 2015, I talked about my work exploring Unicode-land, particularly how to carry out case changing in XeTeX and LuaTeX properly. Since then, expl3 has become a part of the LaTeX kernel, and LaTeX has adopted UTF-8 as the standard input encoding. The time has therefore become ripe to “open up” Unicode-land to allow MakeUppercase and MakeLowercase to roam free. In this talk, I’ll remind us of what Unicode tells us about case changing, where the challenges are and how we’ve approached them in expl3. I’ll then show how this has combined with some *TeX features to enable us to make the switch, incorporate ideas from the textcase package and upgrade MakeUppercase and MakeLowercase for the 21st century.

siunitx: Launching version 3

• Joseph Wright
• Video of the TUG 2022 online conference
• Keywords: LaTeX, scientific notation
• Abstract

  Since it was first released in 2008, siunitx has become established as the major package for typesetting physical quantities in LaTeX. Following up on my TUG 2018 talk, I will look at how the update to version 3 has gone now that this is out. I’ll briefly look at the background, then consider some of the user and developer efforts that have made the launch a success.

l3build: The beginner’s guide

• Joseph Wright
• TUGboat 43:1, 2022
• Abstract

  For package authors, creating a release is a regular process, ideal for automation. There are several steps to creating a release to CTAN, for example ensuring documentation is updated, structuring an archive correctly and actually uploading the material.

  A Some time ago, the LaTeX Team extended their existing basic scripts to create an independent tool, l3build, which can cover all of those tasks. Most significantly, it included features to run comprehensive tests: this aspect was previously covered for TUGboat (2014, 35:3, pp. 287–293). Here, I will give a more general overview of the tool, looking at how it can help package authors create releases in a quick and reliable manner.