TeXblog

 Typography with TeX and LaTeX

TeX news and articles

April 1st, 2013 by Stefan Kottwitz

It has been a bit quiet here for some weeks. I got a son in February, when my little daugher was not much more than 1 year old, both keep us pretty busy at home. So after my full time job I’m not so often at the computer.

However, I still post about TeX news, answer questions in TeX forums, edit and publish articles. My personal site is just not so important. I rather support LaTeX-Community.org, which is read by more people.

Here are some news of the last months I posted there, in case you missed one:

Contributed articles, which I edited regarding HTML design and published on that site:

More articles are in the works and will appear soon.

LaTeX Community Forum

Do you like reading that TeX and LaTeX site with articles, news, and an active TeX forum? If yes, there are some ways you could support it, for example by

  • Answering some LaTeX questions in the forum. Many questions come in, it seems more than the regulars can handle. There are even a lot of unanswered questions. You could pick one or some and answer. Also answers to older questions are welcome.
  • Adding a link to LaTeX-Community.org on your website or blog. Feel free to use the banner here, but a text link would already be great. So some more users may find the site.
  • Sending us news, if you would notice something in the TeX and LaTeX world. You could also get an account to write posts on the frontpage of the site. Even an article about a topic you like? Very welcome!

Category: Online Ressources, General | 1 Comment »

Explaining the meaning of LaTeX

Januar 23rd, 2013 by Stefan Kottwitz

Yesterday I wrote a question on TeX.SE:

How can I explain the meaning of LaTeX to my grandma?

I wrote a book about LaTeX, and my proud grandma wanted to have a copy. So she got it, said “What a beautiful picture on the cover!” and - “What is this, LaTeX?”.

She doesn’t know Word, never used a computer. But she reads books. How can I explain what makes TeX and LaTeX special to a non-technical person?

There are already some answers. Perhaps you know eye-opening words? So I could also explain to my boss, why I request some days off to go to a TeX conference, to my daughter what daddy does on the computer, to my girlfriend with what I spend so much time. Possibly you know such situations.

Category: LaTeX General | No Comments »

Cooperation of LaTeX-Community.org and writeLaTeX.com

Januar 9th, 2013 by Stefan Kottwitz

Since today, LaTeX-Community.org readers can use an online LaTeX compiler in the forum, provided by writeLaTeX.com, an online collaborative LaTeX editor with integrated rapid preview.

By a single click on a link above a code box, the reader will land in the editor which shows the code on the left side, and the output preview on the right side. Compilation is done in realtime.

Now it’s easier to support LaTeX users, especially if they would add a compilable minimal example to their problem. Even small code snippets would be wrapped to create a basic LaTeX document.

For more information and examples, have a look at the announcement.

Category: News, Online Ressources, Tools for LaTeX, LaTeX General | No Comments »

Happy New Year!

Januar 1st, 2013 by Stefan Kottwitz

Happy New Year for all!

Fireworks

The animated GIF image shows fireworks displayed with TikZ written by Chris Hughes aka cmhughes on TeX.SE. Follow the link to see further fireworks effects.

The code is:

\documentclass[tikz]{standalone}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{decorations.pathmorphing,decorations.shapes}
 
\begin{document}
 
\foreach \radius in {1,2,...,20}
{
\begin{tikzpicture}
  % background rectangle
  \filldraw[black] (-3,-3) rectangle (5,3);
  % skyline
  \filldraw[black!80!blue](-3,-3)--(-3,-2)--(-2.5,-2)--(-2.5,-1)--(-2.25,-1)--(-2.25,-2)--(-2,-2)
                            --(-2,-1)--(-1.75,-0.75)--(-1.5,-1)
                            --(-1.5,-2)--(-1.1,-2)--(-1.1,0)--(-0.5,0)--(-0.5,-2)
                            --(0,-2)--(0,-1.5)--(1,-1.5)--(1.25,-0.5)--(1.5,-1.5)--(1.5,-2)
                            --(2,-2)--(2,0)--(2.5,0)--(2.5,-2)
                            --(3,-2)--(3,-1)--(4,-1)--(4,-2)--(5,-2)--(5,-3)--cycle;
  % moon- what a hack!
  \filldraw[white] (4,2.5) arc (90:-90:20pt);
  \filldraw[black] (3.8,2.5) arc (90:-90:20pt);
  % fireworks
  \pgfmathparse{100-(\radius-1)*10};
  % red firework
  \ifnum\radius<11
      \draw[decorate,decoration={crosses},red!\pgfmathresult!black] (0,0) circle (\radius ex);
  \fi
  % orange firework
  \pgfmathparse{100-(\radius-6)*10};
  \ifnum\radius>5
      \ifnum\radius<16
          \draw[decorate,decoration={crosses},orange!\pgfmathresult!black] (1,1) circle ( \radius ex-5ex);
      \fi
  \fi
  % yellow firework
  \pgfmathparse{100-(\radius-11)*10};
  \ifnum\radius>10
      \draw[decorate,decoration={crosses},yellow!\pgfmathresult!black] (2.5,1) circle (\radius ex-10ex);
  \fi
\end{tikzpicture}
}
\end{document}

The resulting PDF file can be cropped and converted using

pdfcrop myfile.pdf
convert -delay 20 -loop 0 -density 300 myfile-crop.pdf fireworks.gif

Category: TeX.SX, pgf/TikZ | No Comments »

Happy Christmas!

Dezember 25th, 2012 by Stefan Kottwitz

Christmas tree

This Christmas tree has been written in LaTeX and TikZ by Alain Matthes. See the complete source code.

Category: pgf/TikZ, Graphics | No Comments »

First Beta of TeXnicCenter 2.0 released

November 4th, 2012 by Stefan Kottwitz

The first beta version of TeXnicCenter 2.0 has been released. Several issues with TXC 2.0 alpha 4 have been fixed. Though it’s still beta, it’s pretty stable and recommended as replacement for version 1, and of course for the alpha versions of 2.0.

For further details, you can read the announcement by Tino Weinkauf. You can get the installer program at the download page, both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.

Category: News, IDEs and Editors | No Comments »

Recent TeX News

November 1st, 2012 by Stefan Kottwitz

Again some weeks without a post here, however I expect to have more time for the blog soon. Here’s a summary of interesting events and news I noticed during the last weeks.

  • The PracTeX Journal 2012-1 has been published. The journal contains practical articles, in this issue for example about creating posters, ebooks, and active documents, and about using the APA6 style, visualizing the vocal tract, using MetaPost, and more.
  • Texmaker 3.5.1 has been released yesterday. Now it provides export via TeX4HT to HTML, MathML and Open Document format.
  • Kile 2.1.3 has been released September 23.
  • TeXstudio 2.5 has been released September 17. One new feature is that it can recognize handwritten math formulas.
  • The UK-TUG recorded videos of their last meeting and put them online on their vimeo channel. Topics: TeX Gyre Math font, Lua2DoX and TeX on the Raspberry Pi, Coffins: boxes with handles, the history of the longtable package, the arara compiling tool, TeX challenges, and discussions.
  • Nicola Talbot published a new article on LaTeX-Community.og: Creating a glossary without using an external indexing application. This article shows how to create sorted glossaries without to run the external makeindex program, by using the datatool package.
  • Andrew Stacey wrote about using TeX to make toast, or about the fun of using TeX to program the GPIO interface of a Raspberry Pi to make LEDs light.
  • On TeX.SX users discussed how to generate smartphone-readable PDF files. Some of the tips: use a6paper size (or another small one), set a narrow margin via geometry, use a screen-readable typeface such as TeX Gyre Heros, and use microtype. Or go another way, produce EPUB files for example via pandoc.
  • Claudio Fiandrino showed how to implement the “Smart Art” feature of PowerPoint (2010) in TikZ, this became a new package available on CTAN: smartdiagram.

Category: News | 1 Comment »

TeX News of August

August 29th, 2012 by Stefan Kottwitz

This month I’ve got few time due to much work, so I did not write much.

So I will give a short summary what I think was interesting in the TeX world this month.

Category: News, LaTeX General | No Comments »

New maintainer wanted for pgfSweave

August 5th, 2012 by Stefan Kottwitz

Cameron Bracken announced that he is looking for a new maintainer of the pgfSweave package. pgfSweave is an R package for use with Sweave for speedy compilation of high quality graphics, specifically it provides capabilities for “caching” graphics generated with Sweave. It has been created by Cameron Bracken and Charlie Sharpsteen, was available at CRAN but has now been removed until somebody would implement necessary changes.

Are you interested in continuing this project? Do you know LaTeX, R and Sweave, are you able to work with Git and Make, or willing to learn it? If you would like to contribute, just send Cameron a message.

Category: News, pgf/TikZ, Graphics | 2 Comments »

TUG 2012 Reports and LaTeX3 News

August 2nd, 2012 by Stefan Kottwitz

David Latchman has posted daily reports from the TeX User Group conference 2012 in Boston:

Very nice to read what happened at the meeting, who talked and about what. Thanks, David!

Furthermore, a new issue of the LaTeX3 News paper has been published. Here’s a short overview and the link to the issue:

Category: LaTeX3, Conferences, News, Events | No Comments »