EN in first answer.
Alle da. Wir sind startklar für die #DANTE2026 und gespannt auf Diskussionen und Vorträge rund um #TeX, & Friends. Ich würde hier drunter wieder mal ein paar kleine Zusammenfassungen der Vorträge schreiben.
Alles bisschen komisch, nachdem der Löwe und ich ja letztes Jahr so viel auslassen mussten… aber mal sehen ob wir uns wieder eingewöhnen.
Ready for #DANTE2026. Looking forward to talks and discussions about digital typesetting, open source and of course #TeX & Friends.
I will post some sumaries of the talks below this one. Thread of the German version can be found in the toot above.
Feels a bit weird … as it's the first conference since I had to skip a bunch last year … We'll see how it works out …
First talk is by @d2887 introducing WIWA (https://wiwa.de), which is our local host for the conference this year. (Thanks for inviting us!)
Afterwards @fiee is giving some technical insights into WIWAdoc, which is the #TeXLaTeX based project which creates the handbooks shown in the picture n the toot above.
The project is based on some work I did years ago… and now they do most of the adjustments internally. So I find it extremly interesting to see how it evolved.
Leistungsstarke und zuverlässige WIWA-Pumpen - seit über 70 Jahren. Als einer der weltweiten Qualitätsführer für Lackier- und Beschichtungstechniken weiß WIWA genau, worauf es ankommt: Präzision und Zuverlässigkeit. Unter höchsten Qualitätsansprüchen fertigt WIWA an seinem Gründungsstandort Lahnau, Deutschland, Geräte und Anlagen für die unterschiedlichsten Anforderungen und härtesten Einsatzbedingungen. WIWA-Technik bewährt sich in der dekorativen und protektiven Oberflächenbeschichtung wie bei der Flächenabdichtung im Tunnel- und Kanalbau oder der Verarbeitung hochviskoser, pastöser 2K- und 3K-Materialien auf Stahl und Beton.
The project ported technical documentation from InDesign to modular #TeXLaTeX workflows using a CI pipeline. Including testing as well as mechanisms to filter which modules have to be translated into a specific language. By this it's possible to minimize the effort of translators.
Additionally this introduced git based VCS and unified certifications among all products.
Questions by the audience focus on interaction between development, technical writers and translators and internal workflows.
Once again @paulocereda successfully nerd-sniped @samcarter which resultet in the cisterian #TeXLaTeX package and a lightning talk at #DANTE2026. (https://ctan.org/pkg/cistercian)
She is presenting her own package as well as the alternative xisterian (https://ctan.org/pkg/xistercian)
Ending up with a bunch of feature requests by the audience … that's how TeX conferences are … ;-)
Working on my backlog ;-)
@frischefarbe was presenting another small side project. You can check it out at https://hobby.boxesandglue.dev/ and take it as an advertisement for #Metapost which a lot of TeXies (probably including myself) might forget about from time to time.
So I guess I put it on the long lists I want to spend some more time wth … after the TODO list is finished ;-)
After lunch @fiee and @d2887 presented the #TeXConTeXt based data sheet workflow they use at WIWA including some additional tooling which simplfies debugging and avoiding mistakes.
This presentation included nice examples showing the mechanisms #LuaMetaTeX (and #LuaTeX) provide to create macros using Lua as well as the internal JSON parser.
Hans Hagen continued with visual examples of the typesetting improvements they developed for #TeXConTeXt to produce more complex layouts using column sets.
The increased flexibility is amazing and his slides also illustrate why one might want to take toddlers and twins into account when optimizing the typesetting.
I will add a link to the slides as soon as they are publshed. Guess it's better to show than try to explain ;-)
The conference continued with a a call for action by @GerdNeugebauer, who is the webmaster of #CTAN, (ctan.org)
He gave some technical inights, showed impressive statistics and used his presentation to request support especially concerning the development as he is currently working a modernized version of the frontend.
(Repo can be found at https://gitlab.com/comprehensive-tex-archive-network/ctan-site)
But there also are less technical tasks which cuould use some more hands.
[1/2] Ulrike Fischer showed a summary of the #TeXLaTeX News including a preview for the next release in June.
Of course she included achievements of the tagging project which included the new template based implementation of sectioning commands.
And the status of accessible math typesetting using #MathML https://www.latex-project.org/news/2026/03/05/PDFA-press/ which is a huge step towards completely accessible documents.
[2/2]
She also metioned that babel-german finally managed to do the switch from ngerman to german on all levels including the hyphenation patterns with the #TeXLive2026 release.
And the implementation of new hooks which aslo can be used to simplify the creation of custom table layouts
See `texdoc ltnews43` or https://texdoc.org/serve/ltnews43/0 for all features concerning the upcoming release and help testing using `lualatex-dev`
Sticking to the development status within the LaTeX-Project Frank Mittelbach took over presenting once again the concepts of hooks, sockets and plugs. I am already aware of these, but I understand that they need to be spread among the packages developers.
This time he also included some practical examples concerning the use of templates using the example of sectioning commands to be adapted by class authors.
Last talk of day 1 was by Ulrik Vieth, who took us into the world of #Opentype math fonts.
After some technical introduction he presented available (and mostly included in TeX Live) fonts, listing features and variants.
The number is still increasing and currently there already are more than 30. He was listing examples for alle so the slides might be helpful searching for compatible fonts for design where they forgot about math.
On second day of #Dante2026 @frischefarbe and me had a talk about electronic invoicing and #ZUGFeRD
He was giving an introduction about concepts and regulations. Some of the tools he developed can be found at https://erechnung.berlin/.
The #TeXLaTeX part of this topic was mine. Giving some examples of my own workflow and custom interfaces I developed for customers.
Additionally I got two feature requests during the conference, so there might be another update this week.
Our presentation was followed by Ulrike Fischer asking herself if she broke something again… (Title was “Did I break something?” in German)
Giving an overview of the mechanisms #l3build is providing für unit testing within #TeX/#TeXLaTeX focusing on the requirements of the tagging project.
It's great that they finally have some more convenient tooling, as I tinkered a lot while working on #KOMAScript tagging. But means I have to adjust my testing workflow.
Peter Seitz then used his point of view as a #TeXLaTeX user to show his process of using datatool for as CSV based workflow to generating documents.
It provides more flexibility than csvsimple but this has to be paid with increasing complexity concerning the interfaces.
The plan is to extend his talk to a practical tutorial for end users.
The rest of the day was less complex and we were messing up the schedule a bit.
Adelheid Bonnetsmüller showed the new part of her series “Having Fun with #TeXLaTeX” and reached part XII. Giving some overview of more specific packages.
Afterwards the members were given an overview of the new membership administration software (campai).
Last slot of that day was mine to be used to question audience on suggestions and ideas concerning the activity within DANTE e.V. as well as the community in total.
As I still find there are options and reasons, the ways of staying connected have changed within the last 30 years …
I will sort the results and will try to found some working groups to improve the way DANTE can support the development of #TeX and Friends within the curent century.
Marei