Publications in 2023

Automated tagging of LaTeX documents what is possible today, in 2023?

• Ulrike Fischer and Frank Mittelbach
• TUGboat 44:2, 2023
• Keywords: LaTeX, tagging, accessibility
• Abstract

  The LaTeX Tagged PDF project was started in spring 2020 and announced to the TeX community by the LaTeX Team at the Online TUG Conference 2020. This short report describes the progress and status of this multi-year project achieved with the LaTeX summer release 2023.

Report on the LaTeX Tagged PDF workshop, TUG 2023

• David Carlisle, Ulrike Fischer and Frank Mittelbach
• TUGboat 44:2, 2023
• Keywords: LaTeX, tagging, accessibility, table tagging
• Abstract

  On the afternoon before the formal conference program, the LaTeX project held a workshop, led by Ulrike Fischer, on generating tagged PDF from LaTeX. The workshop was well attended with more than thirty people participating — a good mix of package developers and end users. We thank DANTE e.V. for very generous financial support.

  The workshop was split into three parts. Firstly, a general introduction to tagging in PDF. Secondly, a demonstration of the process that a class or package maintainer should take to modify the code to produce well-tagged PDF. The acmart class was used for the example as its author, Boris Veytsman, was attending the workshop. Finally, we had a more open discussion on issues and desired syntax for structured tables.

TUG Conference 2023 (Bonn, Germany)

Automated tagging of LaTeX documents—what is possible today?

• Ulrike Fischer
• Video of the TUG 2023 Bonn, Germany
• Keywords: LaTeX, tagging, accessibility
• Abstract

  With the summer 2023 release of the LaTeX format it is now possible to create tagged PDF in an automated way from many “Lamport documents”: documents using the commands described in the LaTeX manual from Leslie Lamport.

  In this talk I will show what is possible and what still needs manual intervention. I will also describe some of the challenges we faced on the technical side and when designing the mapping between LaTeX structures and the set of PDF tags.

38 years with LaTeX—A personal picture story

• Frank Mittelbach
• Video of the TUG 2023 Bonn, Germany
• Abstract

  As the title indicates, this is part of the story of LaTeX in pictures, as seen from my eyes. It shows many highlights throughout the years and puts faces to names—some of which are in the audience but many not. It is based on what was available in my photo archive and certainly biased, but I nevertheless hope it is of some interest.

The LaTeX Companion, 3rd edition—Anecdotes and lessons learned

• Frank Mittelbach
• Video of the TUG 2023 Bonn, Germany
• Abstract

  During the last five years a lot of work went into producing a new edition of The LaTeX Companion. In this talk I will talk about some aspects of that work, the unique challenges and some of the lessons learned during that endeavour.

Supporting backends in expl3

• Joseph Wright
• Video of the TUG 2023 Bonn, Germany
• Keywords: LaTeX, expl3, backends
• Abstract

  The backend in TeX is responsible for the parts of producing output that TeX doesn’t know about, for example colour, image inclusion and hyperlink creation. Each backend has its own syntax and range of supported concepts, so at the macro level there needs to be the appropriate code to ‘talk’ to the backend. In expl3, we have developed a consistent set of backend support files, based on the experience of (La)TeX developers over 30+ years of working with these backends. Here, I will look at the history of backend abstraction and the model used in expl3.

Further adventures in Unicode-land: Refining case changing

• Joseph Wright
• Video of the TUG 2023 Bonn, Germany
• Abstract

  Getting text processing right for Unicode in TeX is a challenge, particularly where one wants to support the full range in pdfTeX. Over the past few years, I have worked on one aspect: case changing. Code to carry out the Unicode case changing algorithm was integrated into the LaTeX kernel a couple of years ago. Since then, we have been refining the details, adding more power and discovering new issues. Here, I’ll look at what we’ve done to get the code working smoothly, and look forward to what might still be improved.

Storing Unicode data in TeX engines

• Joseph Wright
• TUGboat 44:1, 2023

This paper describes the LaTeX approach taken to store Unicode data in the format for quick access in documents.