TUGboat, Volume 33 (2012), No.

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TUG 2012 abstracts focus on the quality standards set by typographers

for hand-typeset documents and ask to what extent
they are achieved by TEX. Limitations of TEX’s
Bill Cheswick algorithms are analyzed; and missing features as well
An iTEX update as new concepts are outlined.
An update on the iTEX project for ebook publishing Now — two decades later — it is time to take another
with TEX, described in TUGboat 32:2. look and see what has been achieved since then, and
Federico Garcia perhaps more importantly, what can be achieved now
Documentation in TEXnicolor with computer power having multiplied by a huge
factor and last not least by the arrival of a number
My package colordoc builds on Frank Mittelbach’s
of successors to TEX which have lifted some of the
docstrip system of documentation, adding some
limitations identified back then.
utilities to use color in the code: matching delimiters
[Slides available at www.latex-project.org/papers.]
({ and }) are colored the same, just as matching \if–
\fi pairs. Commands are made red, bold, and italics, Steve Peter
when they are being \def ined, just as variables when Metafont as a design tool
they are being declared (\newcount, \newif, etc.). Well-written Metafont sources provide a font designer
These tools have saved me a lot of time and trouble with a nearly unparalleled tool to explore variations
when editing or trying to understand a code. In the on a typographic theme. Paired with TEX in an
presentation I also describe the interesting general advanced environment, the designer can explore serif
lines of the workings of both doc and colordoc. structure, bracketing, weight variations and more
in the context in which the font will be used: real
Troy Henderson
textual matter. I’m going to ignore the production
User-friendly web utilities for generating LATEX
problems inherent to Metafont (not to mention the
output and MetaPost graphics
various possible solutions) to concentrate on the de-
The full article was printed in TUGboat 33:1. The
sign aspects of this amazing tool.
online previewers are available at:
http://www.tlhiv.org/ltxpreview LATEX Norbert Preining
http://www.tlhiv.org/mppreview MetaPost Typesetting with Kanji — Japanese typography
http://www.tlhiv.org/mpgraph Function Grapher Japanese typography is very particular and demand-
Sherif Mansour & Hossam Fahmy ing in several respects: four writing systems mixed to-
Experience with Arabic and LuaTEX gether (Kanji, Hiragana, Katakana, Roman letters);
vertical and horizontal typesetting; traditional grid
This is an experience report of an attempt to include
layout versus a mixture of writing systems. This all
the AlQalam font for Arabic script within LuaTEX.
led to a spin-off TEX implementation called “Publish-
We describe the problems we faced trying to fig-
ing TEX” (pTEX) that can deal with these specifics.
ure out how to use a new right-to-left font within
Until 2011 there was an independent distribution
LuaTEX. We also describe how to call the many dif-
of TEX for Japanese users, first based on teTEX, later
ferent shapes that are defined via parameters in the
on TEX Live (ptetex, ptexlive). TEX Live 2011
original font. We also present some ideas to modify
and 2012 introduced all of the necessary tools and
the line breaking algorithm of TEX to allow the use
features and we hope that with TEX Live 2012 the
of different shapes for the same character in order to
need for a special setup for Japanese users is past.
justify the line. This is still work in progress.
In this talk we give an overview of the specialities
Frank Mittelbach of Japanese typography, presenting the difficulties
E-TEX: Guidelines for future TEX extensions, met in modern texts. Continuing, we present the
revisited solutions provided by TEX Live to some of these
Shortly after Don Knuth announced TEX 3.0 I gave problems, and discuss further development.
a paper analyzing TEX’s abilities as a typesetting Norbert Preining
engine. The abstract back then said: TEX Live 2012: Recent developments
Now it is time, after ten years’ experience, to
step back and consider whether or not TEX 3.0 is an TEX Live will be released in early summer 2012 and
adequate answer to the typesetting requirements of brings a couple changes that have been in the works
the nineties. for a long time: a “multi-updmap” that reads several
Output produced by TEX has higher standards updmap.cfg files, and multi-repository support for
than output generated automatically by most other the TEX Live Manager tlmgr.
typesetting systems. Therefore, in this paper we will The updmap program generates the necessary
226 TUGboat, Volume 33 (2012), No. 2

configuration files for dvips, dvipdfm(x), pdftex, LATEX3 development evolved over the decades and
and pxdvi to display PostScript Type 1 fonts. It how it reached a state of being used to produce real
reads a configuration file that lists several map files, users’ documents whether or not they are actually
and combines all the font definitions from these map aware of it. LATEX3 can be thought to consist of
files. Until now local font maps had to be integrated separate ‘layers’, and the programming layer known
into this updmap.cfg file, and so could easily be as expl3 is starting to be used to solve problems
overwritten or otherwise be lost. in and write packages for LATEX 2ε . Our plans are
The new implementation has a long history. The not restricted to such ‘under-the-hood’ measures,
original Perl version was written by Fabrice Popineau however, and we have discussed layers of LATEX3
for Windows, later extended by Reinhard Kotucha that will have more visibility at the user interface.
and Karl Berry and used, starting last year, on all Our talk will discuss these separate layers and where
platforms supported by TEX Live. The code has now our plans lead in the future, and will conclude with
been extended to deal with multiple configuration a demonstration of what’s new in the current code.
files in a transparent way. [Slides available at www.latex-project.org/papers.]
This allows a clear separation of updmap.cfg file Will Robertson
parts. One updmap.cfg file now can (but does not Lineage and progeny of fontspec and unicode-math
have to) provide information about only the texmf
My first LATEX package, fontspec, was written in
tree it resides in. In other words, fonts installed into,
2004 before I knew how to program in LATEX and
for example, the TEXMFLOCAL tree can be activated
in truth before I knew how to program at all. This
by an entry in the updmap.cfg file in this tree.
trial-by-fire introduced me to the lovely world of
We will discuss this new functionality and pro-
TEX programming and after some time I ended up
vide usage examples and advise on transition from
writing a smattering of other works. (All the while
the old system.
actually starting to learn what this whole ‘program-
The other big change in TEX Live this year is
ming’ thing was all about, including how to please
the extension of the TEX Live Manager with the
and displease people who were just trying to get
capacity of reading multiple repositories. In recent
work done, thank you very much.) Some time later
years, a few alternative TEX Live repositories have
I foolishly tried ‘planning’ an ambitious new pack-
come into existence with a wide range of usage pat-
age, unicode-math, that took significantly longer
terns: distribution of local packages (Japanese TEX
to release. In the course of writing that package I
related packages in tlptexlive, Korean TEX User
learned really just how little I actually knew, and
Group repository), TEX Live infrastructure testing
as a side-effect somehow ended up helping to write
(in tlcritical), provision of development and non-
code for the LATEX3 project. In this talk I will talk
free packages (in tlcontrib), etc.
about the motivation for writing these two packages,
Until now a user had to go through all desired
discuss recent developments with them, and finally
repositories one by one passing the necessary param-
touch on how LATEX3 influenced their development.
eters for each in turn. The new tlmgr supports use
of several sources at the same time. The selection of Herbert Schulz
packages appearing in multiple repositories is done Workshop: Introduction to TeXShop
by “pinning” packages to a repository. A workshop introducing some of the more obscure
We will present this new functionality, give usage and less used features of TeXShop for users who wish
examples, and a guided tour through setting up and to become more proficient in its use to produce LATEX
using this new feature. documents.
We will close with an overview of other changes
Christina Thiele
in TEX Live 2012.
Almost 30 years of using TEX
Will Robertson & Frank Mittelbach It’s not just TEX that’s gotten older and more sea-
LATEX3: From local to global — a brief history and soned . . . Reflections on changes in TEX and friends
recent developments as used in a small typesetting company: software
The original source code for LATEX3 dates to the and hardware, of course, but also procedures and
early 1990s. Key aspects of its development occurred skills, resources that went from zero to virtually
during that decade, but it was not until the late infinite, all of it interwoven with life and personal
2000s that the project began delivering code that change. It’s not earth-shaking news, but we’ve come
was widely used by mainstream LATEX users. What far enough that looking back yields some interesting
happened in this time? This talk will discuss how comparisons.