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Some TeX Developments
Personal blog · texdev.netprogrammingwriting
Some TeX Developments is a personal blog at texdev.net about programming and writing. Since 2011, 8 different Hacker News readers have linked it 16 times, most often “Engine News from the LaTeX Project”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-07, and you can follow it by feed.
Some TeX Developments
Most-linked posts?
- Engine News from the LaTeX Project3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-11-07
- Writing a curriculum vitae in LaTeX (Part 1)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-11-06
What Hacker News says?
LaTeX3 has either been cancelled or has already happened, depending on how you look at at. [0] But despite that, LaTeX is still continuously improving, although it will never beat Typst on speed or simpler markup. [0]: https://www.texdev.net/2024/11/11/the-mythical-latex3
Comment linking /2024/11/11/the-mythical-latex3
on “Typst: A Possible LaTeX Replacement”Submitted LaTeX3 Roadmap as a story · 39 points
HN discussionNext thing is lack of utf-8 and TrueType fonts supports (I know there is XeTeX and LuaTeX) UTF-8 is supported by all modern engines. It's just that it wasn't the default for pdfTeX so you had to add one line to enable it. But this has changed in 2018 [1], so UTF-8 is now th default LaTeX encoding even when using good old pdfTeX. [1] https://www.texdev.net/2018/03/25/latex2e-utf-8-as-standard/
Comment linking /2018/03/25/latex2e-utf-8-as-standard/
on “Web-assembly powered WYSIWYG LaTeX Editor, supporting nearly all LaTeX package”Submitted Programming LaTeX3: Creating functions as a story · 4 points
HN discussionLuaTeX is the de facto successor of pdfTeX and is basically a more maintained pdfTeX with Unicode support and Lua scripting, whereas XeTeX has its own engine. In practice, it means that LuaTeX "just works" with most documents while with XeTeX you run into all sorts of weird incompatibilities. Fancy packages that make use of Lua scripting (e.g., graphdrawing) will only work with LuaTeX. Edit: Looks like it's not de f…
Comment linking /2024/11/05/engine-news-from-the-latex-project
on “Modern LaTeX”Submitted XeTeX 0.9999: Moving to HarfBuzz (and lots of other goodies) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionHaving experience with digitizing a university textbook in physics by hand, this is a very nice LaTeX guide for everyone interested. One thing worth noting from 2025 perspective that the "default" local setup is most likely going to be VSCode with LaTeX Workshop[1] and LTeX+[2] extensions, and that you should use TeX Live on every platform supported by it (since MiKTeX and friends can lag). Also, use LuaTeX, as it's…
Comment linking /2024/11/05/engine-news-from-the-latex-project
on “Modern LaTeX”Submitted Programming LaTeX3: The programming environment as a story · 2 points
HN discussionAlways interesting to see some templates for LaTeX -- but if the "selection" made in the CV section is an indication of the overall thought that have gone into the rest of the site, I don't really see that it offer much over searching CTAN[1] and looking at the pdf-examples that are usually included with the useful packages/templates available there ? As I've recently been looking at writing up a CV with LaTeX, I've…
Comment linking /2011/11/05/writing-a-curriculum-vitae-in-latex-part-1/
on “LaTeX Templates”Submitted Writing a curriculum vitae in LaTeX (Part 1) as a story · 2 points
HN discussion> I wonder what's the status of LaTeX 3 It's either already here or never happening, depending on your perspective [0] [1]. > it would be nice to have an automation in the style of Tectonic What do you mean by "automation"? [0]: https://www.texdev.net/2024/11/11/the-mythical-latex3 [1]: https://tug.org/TUGboat/tb44-1/tb136mitt-history.pdf#page=5
Comment linking /2024/11/11/the-mythical-latex3
on “TeX Live 2026 is available for download now”Submitted Engine News from the LaTeX Project as a story · 1 points
HN discussion> Well, LaTeX3 was sort of what you describe, but has been dropped It depends on your perspective, since you could similarly argue that it's already here [0] [1]. > I've always held that someone needs to put together a templated version where quite a large number of options are available, but commented out, so that one could work up a version of a document by just uncommenting the appropriate lines You can Google "L…
Comment linking /2024/11/11/the-mythical-latex3
on “The Lingua Franca of LaTeX”Part 4: http://www.texdev.net/2011/11/08/writing-a-curriculum-vitae-...
Comment linking /2011/11/08/writing-a-curriculum-vitae-in-latex-part-4/
on “Writing a curriculum vitae in LaTeX (Part 1)”Part 3: http://www.texdev.net/2011/11/07/writing-a-curriculum-vitae-...
Comment linking /2011/11/07/writing-a-curriculum-vitae-in-latex-part-3/
on “Writing a curriculum vitae in LaTeX (Part 1)”Part 2: http://www.texdev.net/2011/11/06/writing-a-curriculum-vitae-...
Comment linking /2011/11/06/writing-a-curriculum-vitae-in-latex-part-2/
on “Writing a curriculum vitae in LaTeX (Part 1)”
