July 14, 2021

Towards 21st Century Digital Typography

The years 2078 to 2082 will be the 100th anniversary of Don Knuth's creation of TeX, Metafont and the Computer Modern fonts. Being already more than middle-aged, I won't be there to celebrate. I'll be giving a talk on this at the online 2021 TeX Conference (5-8 August). The abstract is below. At tomorrow's (15 July, 18:30 UK time) TeX Hour your views on this topic will be most welcome. For details see contact.

March 24, 2021

Lighter TeX Runs Faster

Summary This post is making TeX working better on the cloud. It does this by making a custom TeX Live that contains only the resource your document needs. It's preparation for the TeX Hour tomorrow (Thursday 25 March). There's a proof-of-concept at the URLs at the foot of this page. In case you didn't know, every Thursday (18:30 to 19:30 UK time) there's a zoom TeX Hour. The zoom URL and other details are here.

March 17, 2021

Render Latex Multiple Ways

Summary This post is about LaTeX to PDF and LaTeX to HTML. It's preparation for the TeX Hour tomorrow (Thursday 18 March). In case you didn't know, every Thursday (18:30 to 19:30 UK time) there's a zoom TeX Hour. The zoom URL and other details here. At tomorrow's TeX Hour I'll attempt to give a history of producing PDF and HTML from a single source file, and related topics. Also, questions can be asked and there'll be discussion.

March 10, 2021

A Blind Math User Story

Summary A user story is a description of a system, from the point of view of a user of the system. Here give the user story of an engineering college student who is blind. For background see User Stories and Acccessibility. Every Thursday (18:30 to 19:30 UK time) there's a zoom TeX Hour. Details here. Once upon a time … This month on the Blind Math list Kellee Sanchez wrote

March 10, 2021

A Visually Impaired Coder's User Story

Summary A user story is a description of a system, from the point of view of a user of the system. Here give the user story a person who's blind attending a software boot camp. For background see User Stories and Acccessibility. Every Thursday (18:30 to 19:30 UK time) there's a zoom TeX Hour. Details here. Once upon a time … This month on the Visually Impaired coders list Jana Schroeder wrote

March 10, 2021

Accessible and Tagged PDF

Accessible PDF A PDF document is accessible to me if I can open and read it. That might depend on the circumstances and the document. It is a human-related property of the document. A real human being reading the document. Tagged PDF A PDF document is tagged if roughly speaking from it an equivalent HTML document can be obtained, by applying some technically specified software. The real human being reading the document is not present.

March 10, 2021

User Stories and Accessibility

What is a user story? A user story is a description of a system, from the point of view of a user of the system. It's a story. Once upon a time there was a prince and so on. The traditional end is and they all lived happily ever after. Every Thursday (18:30 to 19:30 UK time) there's a zoom TeX Hour. Details here. A modern user story Once upon a time a Paralympian athlete caught the train.

March 4, 2021

New Online Tools for TeX Beginners

Summary Many TeX users need more and better TeX tools that run in a web browser. And a better social network of TeX users. And a way for experts to share their experience and knowledge with beginners. This post shows what can be done now to move us forward. Beginner's TeX Hour tonight There's a Beginner's TeX hour tonight (Thursday 4 March) 6:30 to 7:30pm UK time. It's a chance to discuss this post, and to make your own suggestions.

February 18, 2021

Tex Hour Agenda

Summary This post covers a lot, quickly. Here's a table of contents. Report: Last week Accessible Mathematics; video recording. Discussion: This week (today) Input, Conversion and Output; LaTeX, Python docs, RST; everything to everything, Pandoc, Metcalfe's Law. Teaser: Next week Archival Documents and Software; Knuth on Future of TeX and Metafont (1990). Preview: Next month, monthly cycle; B, A, C, D and X; Why B before A? Last week Accessible Mathematics Accessible mathematics was last week's topic.

February 11, 2021

Blind Math News

Summmary Last week I wrote to the Blind Math mailing list announcing a zoom TeX Hour tonight at 6:30 to 7:30pm UK time on accessible mathematics. I also wrote Many teachers use LaTeX for course materials. I'd like to have real-world examples of LaTeX math, and accessibility problems and solutions. Please send to this list or to me privately as you wish. In this post I summarise the responses.