The Island of TeX

Publications

  • 2023Talk : “The Island of TeX 2023: sailing the smooth seas of ideas”, TUG 2023, watch on YouTube, slides, abstract:

    The Island of TeX always valued community over development pace. This year, we are proud that we could convince our inner sloths to produce a long-awaited new albatross release and a new website for our community. On the technical side, we improved our build infrastructure and started welcoming TeX packages. But in the end, this year was primarily about collecting ideas so stay tuned for our talk and call for action.

  • 2023Talk : “Living in containers: on TeX Live in a docker setting”, TUG 2023, watch on YouTube, slides, abstract:

    Over the course of the last year(s), the Island of TeX has received quite some interest in its Docker containers. This talk gives a brief overview about our container infrastructure for TeX Live and ConTeXt, including some examples on using our containers in production environments. Last but not least, we will elaborate on some interesting (mostly still open) problems connected to containerizing TeX Live.

  • 2022Article “IoT theatre presents: The Tempest”, TUGboat, Volume 23 (2022), No. 2, DOI: 10.47397/tb/43-2/tb134island-tempest, published PDF, abstract:

    2021 was a challenging year for the Island of TeX: roadmap changes, lack of resources, server limitations. Yet, resilience, persistence and a bit of good humour made the island even stronger, with new joiners, community support, bold plans and an even brighter future for the TeX ecosystem. And all just in time for celebrating 10 years of arara, our beloved bird!

  • 2022Talk : “IoT theatre presents: The Tempest”, TUG 2022, watch on YouTube, corresponding TUGboat article

  • 2021Talk : “2020: a year in review, living on an island”, TUG 2021, watch on YouTube

  • 2020Article “The Island of TeX: Developing abroad – your next destination”, TUGboat, Volume 41 (2020), No. 2, published PDF, abstract:

    The Island of TeX is a collaborative effort to provide a home to community-based TeX projects. This article discusses the Island's long-term goals and how the worldwide community can come aboard and help the organization enhance the TeX experience for everybody, from newbies to power users.

  • 2020Talk : “The Island of TeX: Developing abroad – your next destination”, TUG 2020, watch on YouTube, corresponding TUGboat article

  • 2020Article “TeXdoc online – a web interface for serving TeX documentation”, TUGboat, Volume 41 (2020), No. 3, published PDF, abstract:

    When looking for TeX-related documentation, users have many options, including running texdoc on their local machine, looking up the package at CTAN, or using a service like texdoc.net. As the latter is known for lacking regular updates, the Island of TeX decided to take the opportunity to provide a complete rewrite of the provided service using a RESTful API and a self-updating Docker container.

  • 2019Article “Providing Docker images for TeX Live and ConTeXt”, TUGboat, Volume 40 (2019), No. 3, published PDF, abstract:

    With the spread of version control and continuous integration services among TeX users there is a need to provide TeX distributions for containerized services. As most available images are not updated regularly and many of them lack relevant tools, we aim to provide images for the regular user who wants continuous integration to work like any other TeX distro.

You will find sources to most of the above publications in this website's GitLab repository. Please note that those sources may not represent the state as published, especially as they do not include editorial corrections made after submission.