Publications in 2020

A General LuaTeX Framework for Globally Optimized Pagination (peer reviewed version)

• Frank Mittelbach
• Paper submitted to the Computational Intelligence Journal (Wiley) in 2017, accepted January 2018, published 2019
• Abstract:

  Pagination problems deal with questions around transforming a source text stream into a formatted document by dividing it up into individual columns and pages, including adding auxiliary elements that have some relationship to the source stream data but may allow a certain amount of variation in placement (such as figures or footnotes).

  Traditionally the pagination problem has been approached by separating it into one of micro-typography (e.g., breaking text into paragraphs, also known as h&j) and one of macro-typography (e.g., taking a galley of already formatted paragraphs and breaking them into columns and pages) without much interaction between the two.

  While early solutions for both problem areas used simple greedy algorithms, Knuth and Plass (1981) introduced in the ’80s a global-fit algorithm for line breaking that optimizes the breaks across the whole paragraph. This algorithm was implemented in TeX’82 (see Knuth (986b)) and has since kept its crown as the best available solution for this space. However, for macro-typography there has been no (successful) attempt to provide globally optimized page layout: All systems to date (including TeX) use greedy algorithms for pagination. Various problems in this area have been researched and the literature documents some prototype development. But none of them have been made widely available to the research community or ever made it into a generally usable and publicly available system.

  This paper is an extended version of the work by Mittelbach (2016) originally presented at the DocEng ’16 conference in Vienna. It presents a framework for a global-fit algorithm for page breaking based on the ideas of Knuth/Plass. It is implemented in such a way that it is directly usable without additional executables with any modern TeX installation. It therefore can serve as a test bed for future experiments and extensions in this space. At the same time a cleaned-up version of the current prototype has the potential to become a production tool for the huge number of TeX users world-wide.

  The paper also discusses two already implemented extensions that increase the flexibility of the pagination process (a necessary prerequisite for successful global optimization): the ability to automatically consider existing flexibility in paragraph length (by considering paragraph variations with different numbers of lines) and the concept of running the columns on a double spread a line long or short. It concludes with a discussion of the overall approach, its inherent limitations and directions for future research.

This article is an extended version (37 pages) of the 2016 ACM article “A General Framework for Globally Optimized Pagination”, providing a lot more details and additional research results.

Legal notice from Wiley

This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Frank Mittelbach. “A general LuaTeX framework for globally optimized pagination”. Computational Intelligence, 35(2):242–284, 2019, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/coin.12165. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions. This article may not be enhanced, enriched or otherwise transformed into a derivative work, without express permission from Wiley or by statutory rights under applicable legislation. Copyright notices must not be removed, obscured or modified. The article must be linked to Wiley’s version of record on Wiley Online Library and any embedding, framing or otherwise making available the article or pages thereof by third parties from platforms, services and websites other than Wiley Online Library must be prohibited.”

LaTeX Tagged PDF — A blueprint for a large project

• Frank Mittelbach
• Chris Rowley
• TUGboat 41:3, 2020
• Abstract

  In Frank’s talk at the TUG 2020 online conference we announced the start of a multi-year project to enhance LaTeX to fully and naturally support the creation of structured document formats, in particular the “tagged PDF” format as required by accessibility standards such as PDF/UA.

  In this short article we outline the background to this project and some of its history so far. We then describe the major features of the project and the tasks involved, of which more details can be found in the Feasibility Study that was prepared as the first part of our co-operation with Adobe.

  This leads on to a description of how we plan to use the study as the basis for our work on the project and some details of our planned working methodologies, illustrated by what we have achieved so far and leading to a discussion of some of the obstacles we foresee.

  Finally there is also a summary of recent, current and upcoming activities on and around the project.

LaTeX Tagged PDF Feasibility Evaluation Study

• Frank Mittelbach
• Ulrike Fischer
• Chris Rowley
• Written: December 2019 with minor updates September 2020

This forty-page document contains information about a multi-year project, started by the LaTeX Project Team in 2020, that will extend LaTeX to produce tagged, and hence accessible, PDF with minimal manual intervention. It explains in detail both the project goals and the tasks that need to be undertaken, concluding with a detailed project plan. It is our blueprint for how we think the project should be undertaken.

The Introduction contains an overview of the benefits of the project and explains why LaTeX documents make a good starting point for the production of tagged PDF. More information about this blueprint and the project can be found in the article “LaTeX Tagged PDF — A blueprint for a large project” TUGboat, Volume 41-3 (2020), which will appear shortly.

The original version of this study dates from late 2019 and was addressed primarily to an audience within Adobe which consisted of engineers and managers with a wide knowledge of digital typography and electronic publishing but not necessarily much background within the specialized world of TeX, LaTeX and friends. This version of the study was updated in September 2020 with some minor redactions, corrections and clarifications.

TUG Conference 2020 (Online conference)

Quo vadis LaTeX(3) Team — A look back and at the upcoming years

• Frank Mittelbach
• TUGboat 41:2, 2020
• Abstract

  This is a brief write-up of a talk given by the author at the TUG’20 online conference.

The talk touches briefly on the questions “where we are coming from” (we being the LaTeX Project Team), “where we are now” and then focusses on the LaTeX Project’s plans for the upcoming years, which will primarily be focussed on providing an out-of-the box solution for generating tagged PDF with LaTeX and will include gentle refactoring of parts of the core LaTeX and providing important functionality, such as extended standard support for color, hyperlinks etc., as part of the kernel.

This is a multi-year journey that we have just started and we will briefly explain the places this will take us through. At its end we expect that LaTeX users are able to produce tagged and “accessible” PDF without the need to post-process the result of their LaTeX run.

A video of the presentation given by Frank is available on the TUG YouTube channel.

learnlatex.org: Taking LaTeX training fully interactive

• David Carlisle
• Paulo Roberto Massa Cereda
• Joseph Wright
• TUGboat 41:2, 2020
• Abstract

  An introduction to the learnlatex.org website that is currently been set up.

A video of the presentation given by Joseph is available on the TUG YouTube channel.

The fewerfloatpages package

• Frank Mittelbach
• TUGboat 41:1, 2020
• Abstract

  LaTeX’s float algorithm has the tendency to produce fairly empty float pages, i.e., pages containing only floats but with a lot of free space remaining that could easily be filled with nearby text. There are good reasons for this behavior; nevertheless, the results look unappealing and in many cases documents are unnecessarily enlarged.

  The fewerfloatpages package provides an extended algorithm that improves on this behavior without the need for manual intervention by the user.

Case changing: From TeX primitives to the Unicode algorithm

• Joseph Wright
• TUGboat 41:1, 2020
• Abstract

  The concept of letter case is well established for several alphabet-based scripts, most notably Latin, Greek and Cyrillic. Upper- and lowercase are so widely used that it may not be obvious that there are several subtleties in converting case. However, those subtleties are important in supporting a wide range of users, and getting all of them right is non-trivial.

  Whilst the English alphabet has simple casechanging rules, when we look beyond English and (possibly) beyond the Latin alphabet, tracking the requirements becomes more complicated. Many of these have been codified by the Unicode Consortium, and following these guidelines means that different pieces of software can give consistent outcomes.

  Here, I want to look at how case changing can be set up in TeX, primarily focussing on tools that the LaTeX Project have provided, but in the wider context of the TeX ecosystem.

Creating accessible pdfs with LaTeX

• Ulrike Fischer
• TUGboat 41:1, 2020
• Abstract

  This article describes the current state and planned actions to improve accessibility of pdfs created with LaTeX, as currently undertaken by the LaTeX Team.

Typesetting Bangla script with LuaLaTeX

• Ulrike Fischer and Marcel Krüger
• TUGboat 41:1, 2020
• Abstract

  A case study of using LuaLaTeX and the new Harfbuzz library.

TeX, LaTeX and math

• Enrico Gregorio
• TUGboat 41:1, 2020
• Abstract

  We discuss some aspects of mathematical typesetting: choice of symbols, code abstraction, fine details. Relationships between math typesetting and international standards are examined. A final section on typesetting of numbers and units reports on some recent developments in the field.