Nov 26 news: Preliterate Programming, MacTeX/TeXShop, LaTeX, TUG election, TUGboat, CTAN
Hello TeX users,
TUG has published another book: Preliterate Programming, edited by Mitchell Gerrard. This is an anthology of writings on the idea that programs are intended for humans to read as much as for machines to run. It includes reprints of classic computer science papers anticipating Donald Knuth's literate programming system, as well as many items never published before, and new interviews by Mitch with Knuth and his student-colleagues on the TeX project. As a capstone, Mitch also wrote an original essay on the state of literate programming today.
You can order Preliterate Programming as an ebook or a physical book
from TUG:
https://tug.org/prelit
There is a discount for TeX user group members. We hope it will be available from regular online bookstores soon, but administrative wheels grind exceedingly slow.
Mitch also gave a talk about the book at TUG'26:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sintn4i_0x8
Andreas Scherer, the maintainer of CWEB for years now, has written a review of the book. It will be in the upcoming TUGboat, and you can read online now: https://tug.org/books/reviews/tb147reviews-gerrard.html
*
Dick Koch released the TeXShop editor for the Mac in 2000 and has maintained it since then. He also was in the initial team that started the MacTeX distribution back in 2005 and has updated MacTeX every year since. He has now announced his retirement from both projects. We want to profoundly thank Dick for all the work he has put into TeX on the Mac over these many years and wish him all the best in the future.
He has passed on principal maintainership of MacTeX to Bruno Voisin, and of TeXShop to Yusuke Terada. Our thanks and best wishes to Bruno and Yusuke as well, and also to Herb Schulz and the many other people who continue to help support TeX on Apple systems.
The main web pages for the two projects:
https://tug.org/mactex/
https://texshop.app/
*
New LaTeX version 2026-11-01 is available from CTAN and TeX distributions now. It includes many updates for tagged/accessible PDF, as well as plenty of other bug fixes and enhancements. Read about it in the latest LaTeX news: https://mirrors.ctan.org/macros/latex/base/ltnews44.pdf
*
2027 will be an election year for TUG. The positions of TUG President and eight other members of the Board of Directors will be open. The nomination form and election information are available: https://tug.org/election/
The deadline for submission of nominations:
March 1, 2027, 7am US/Pacific
A short web page gives informal guidelines on the roles of the various
TUG board members:
https://tug.org/election/guidelines.html
We encourage all who are interested to take a look and consider running.
*
The third TUGboat issue for 2026 is wrapped up and will be at the
printer soon.
The deadline for the first issue of TUGboat next year is March 19, 2027. Early submissions are always welcome and appreciated: https://tug.org/TUGboat/location.html
As mentioned last time, TUGboat 47:2, the proceedings for the TUG'26
conference at Calgary this summer, has been mailed to members and is
published online.
https://tug.org/TUGboat/Contents/contents47-2.html
https://tug.org/tug2026/
So TUGboat 47:1 is now fully open to all:
https://tug.org/TUGboat/Contents/contents47-1.html
*
New CTAN packages, October 2026 (for all updates: https://ctan.org/ctan-ann):
Information about any CTAN package is available at
ctan.org/pkg/PACKAGE-NAME
- abntex2-ufv, undergraduate thesis class for UFV (Brazil), based on abnTeX2
- algorithmlite, a lightweight algorithm float without the float package
- animategif, embed animated GIF files in PDF documents, decoded in pure Lua
- atsresume, one-column resumes with PDF text for applicant tracking systems
- babelbidi, an extension to babel's bidirectional support
- beamercolortheme-chalkboard, chalkboard-inspired dark green color theme
- bibstyles-ru, russian bibliography styles
- bookbangla, writing Bangla and Assamese books with memoir
- boolalg, truth tables and other support for Boolean algebra
- calendar-grid, configurable month and year calendar grids with annotations
- codemwe, typeset code with a result box and generate MWE files
- combgames-symbols, symbols and notation for combinatorial game theory
- combgames-tikz, TikZ boards for combinatorial games
- cprotect-other, an alternative \cprotect that avoids .cpt files
- data-driven-visualization, configurable CSV-driven concentric arc charts
- docref, references to sections in package documentation.
- doodle-icons, use doodle-icons through LaTeX commands
- folarrow, arrows with three strokes for the projection of a foliated bundle
- footnotenosplit, suppress orphan footnote rules when footnotes cannot split
- fxpicture, line styles for the picture environment
- game-icons, use the game-icons.net icons and badges in LaTeX
- gradbars, compact data graphics for LaTeX tables and inline text
- graphicnovel, a semantic LaTeX class for graphic-novel and comic scripts
- gyoudori, gyou-dori (line-based placement) for Japanese typesetting
- hangulmath, hangul jamo as mathematical symbols
- hauthesis, thesis template for Huai'an University
- iesibai-template, unofficial support for IESIBAI, Mexico
- juniamaroc-beamer, a Beamer-based presentation class for JUNIA Maroc
- linesys, typeset linear systems and expressions from matrix-like input
- lisnoti, a sans serif font for text and math
- lua-font-config, Lua-based OpenType font configuration for LuaLaTeX
- lucidcv, ATS-safe customizable LuaLaTeX template for modern resumes/CVs
- matchedsplit, matched delimiters across manually broken equations
- math-shorthandz, smart shorthands for typesetting math in LaTeX
- mathaidisclose, AI disclosure for mathematics
- nycbullets, New York City Subway route bullets
- oddsmath, odds conversion and more for wagering-market documents
- openglyph, font-backed typesetting and construction of historic Chinese
- osglecture, lecture materials from one source: slides, script, tagged PDF
- philphys, support for the journal Philosophy of Physics
- physketch, TikZ styles and pictures for physics drawings
- problib, create a library and catalog of problems
- programmes-cpge, official French CPGE physics syllabi as LaTeX data
- rhode-island-thesis, university of Rhode Island thesis template
- showhanmengrid, show the hanmen grid of Japanese text
- spanish-mathml-intent, Spanish MathML intent for accessible (tagged) PDF
- statusstamp, reproducible document status stamps for LaTeX
- suai-report, Saint Petersburg State U. of Aerospace Instrumentation reports
- subcaptionlite, subfigures and subtables without the caption package
- tamu-talk, an independently maintained Texas A&M theme for ltx-talk
- tcbpagefootnote, page footnotes from inside tcolorbox
- tcode, typesetting verbatim code: C, Python, Julia, ...
- terminaltrees, evenly spaced leaves and rounded branches for Forest trees
- textdate, displaying dates in textual form
- tikz-umld, draw UML diagrams with TikZ
- tkz-fn, draw graphs of functions in 2D, using TikZ and LuaLaTeX
- ugentdocs, house style document classes for Ghent University
- wiseref, cross-references with configurable type names and more
Happy \TeX{}ing,
Karl Berry, on behalf of the TUG Board