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:

• TeX Live 2013 Release Plan, April 1
• First Beta of XeTeX 0.9999​ released, March 12
• Texmaker 4.0 released, March 10
• Topic Tags for the LaTeX Community Forum, March 1
• Transplanting TeX Live from one Windows system to another one, February 27
• A MikTeX update may remove amslatex / amsmath as obsolete - how to fix it, February 6

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

• LaTeX Tricks (VII) by Luca Merciadri, March 20
• TikZ Library for Structural Analysis by Jürgen Hackl, March 10
• News from LaTeXTemplates.com by Vel, January 26
• Installing TeX Live on Linux by Svend, January 9

More articles are in the works and will appear soon.

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!

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.

Velimir just published an article about LaTeX templates on LaTeX-Community.org. In this article, he explains benefits of using templates, and he introduces his site www.LaTeXTemplates.com, which collects templates and publishes it under a Creative Commons license.

Some benefits of using templates:

• Rapid document development
• Based on tried, tested and proven pre-defined layout
• Documented methods for customization

Of course, this requires templates which are of high quality and up-to-date. It might be a good idea to additional classify templates by development date and review date. A simple line “Reviewed 2012 by …” can create confidence in a template.

LaTeX3 will introduce a template concept. This is a similar idea, but it will go further and shall separate the design (template) from the author interface (document) and the underlying source (classes and packages). With LaTeX2e templates, design and interface are still mixed, though it can already be a good way for authors. And I think, when LaTeX3 comes out, good existing LaTeX2e templates will benefit and will be designed to become LaTeX3 templates.

TeXample.net is now on Twitter. TeXample.net is a web site dedicated to TeX and related software, currently it’s focussed on collecting and showing TikZ examples.

Follow @TeXgallery to read about new contributions and site features.

Four TikZ examples have been added this week, more are planned, as well as new site features. Twitter will inform about smaller updates, blog posts about bigger changes.

The @TeXgallery Twitter logo is a Koch snowflake, which can be produced using TikZ:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{lindenmayersystems}
\usetikzlibrary[shadings]
\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\shadedraw[shading=color wheel] 
  [l-system={rule set={F -> F-F++F-F}, step=2pt, angle=60,
   axiom=F++F++F, order=4}] lindenmayer system -- cycle;
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}

This is also one of the recently added examples.

From Usenet to Web 2.0 and beyond - Presentation on TUG 2011

I attended the TeX Users Group Conference 2011 in Trivandrum, Kerala, India, from October 19 to October 21. On this meeting I made a presentation about TeX online communities, such as discussion groups, mailing lists and web forums. I introduced the TeX Q&A site tex.stackexchange.com and showed some of its features which make it a good choice for developing and sharing TeX contents, for building a TeX knowledge base besides just discussing. Finally I compared those systems.

Direct PDF download:

This presentation and text is free with cc-wiki license and attribution required, which means you are free to use, to share and to remix it, while mentioning the author’s name and if possible linking back to here.

Abstract:

Bringing together TeX users online - from Usenet to Web 2.0 and beyond

It all began with the Usenet, around 1980. The online discussion board comp.text.tex emerged, where TeX hackers gathered and still populate it today.

On the continuously developing Internet, TeX user groups created mailing lists, built home pages and software archives. Web forums turned up and lowered the barrier for beginners and occasional TeX users for getting support.

Today, TeX’s friends can also follow blogs, news feeds, and take part in vibrant question and answer sites.

In this talk we will look at present online TeX activities.

See also the TUG 2011 conference program.

Today the 10.000th question has been posted on TeX.SX:

Why do arguments to nested \tilde or \breve commands reappear when amsmath is used?

It deals with a bug found in amsmath when nested accents are used. A workaround and one working solution have been found, and it turned out that the bug is already on the todo list of AMS. Let’s hope that AMS makes that list available for the public, so we would know if we stumbled across a known bug which will be fixed soon or if it’s unknown.

Since today the TeX-SX Q&A site contains more than 10.000 questions and 18.000 answers of more than 6.900 registered users, only 132 questions are still unanswered. Yet - there are regular chat meetings where unanswered questions are being discussed, answered and sometimes closed, for example if the information in the question was insufficient and hasn’t been updated since a long time.

In July a TeX.SX community blog has been established, in about 20 blog posts by different authors you can read more about the site and its users.

The question and answer site tex.stackexchange.com also known as TeX.SX, which has about 6,600 users today, is part of the Stack Exchange network. This consists of currently 63 question and answer sites on various topics with more than 1,180,000 registered users. On the TeX.SX meta site, the idea has been brought up, to join the TeX Users Group (TUG) with the whole Stack Exchange Network, as an institutional member, which has been strongly supported by the TeX.SX community.

The TeX Users Group is a not-for-profit organization for TeX users word wide. TUG was the first TeX users group, founded in 1980, and it is the most international one, being an important part of the worldwide TeX community.

TUG supports the TeX software archive network CTAN, produces the print journal TUGboat and the TeX Collection DVD which contains TeX Live, a TeX distribution where also TUG members work hard on. Its membership income is also partly used to directly support development projects.

As result of the TeX.SX initiative, Stack Exchange now joined the TUG as institutional member, which means also sponsoring by a membership fee. Furthermore, eight TeX.SX users will individually join. On Meta we are currently discussing about how to determine these members.

See also the list: Institutional members of the TeX Users Group.

This text is available in German. Dieser Text ist auch in Deutsch verfügbar.

The question & answer site tex.stackexchange.com is now more than one year old. Until now, there are 8,784 questions, 97 % of them have been answered. It has grown to a great TeX support web site, and now it is a content rich knowledge base.

Some of the most active contributors are members of the international TeX User Group (TUG). How about the other way round - how about Stack Exchange joining the TUG as institutional member? If you would like to support this idea, read and vote on

Do we want StackExchange to become an institutional member of the TUG?

It would be great if you would contribute further thoughts which may convince Stack Exchange Inc. or just work out this idea further, especially if you are a TUG member and familiar with it.

TeX Live 2011 is now available online. It is a comprehensive TeX system working on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and other Unix systems. It includes LaTeX and all the major TeX-related programs, macro packages, and fonts that are free software and supports many languages. TeX Live has been developed since 1996 supported by several TeX user groups.

There are some changes in the new version:

• biber is now included, a program for bibliography processing.
• The Mac OS X binaries now work only on Leopard or later; Panther and Tiger are no longer supported.
• MetaPost no longer creates or uses .mem files. Needed files are read on every run.
• updmap runs much faster now.

Also MacTeX 2011 has been published online.

For more information and download visit

• the Homepage of TeX Live
• the list of changes
• the TeX Live download page
• Donating to TUG Activities
• Contributing to TeX Live as user, author or developer.

This text is available in German. Dieser Text ist auch in Deutsch verfügbar.

John D. Cook posts daily short TeX messages at @TeXtip on Twitter. News, links to solutions and small tips are among the topics. @TeXtip has 2081 followers today.