How you can help in the TeX community

(If you're looking for help with using TeX, rather than ways to contribute, please see the getting started with TeX page.)

One way to help the community that we recommend to everyone is to join TUG or another TeX user group. This helps support the infrastructure of TeX and the TeX world. Or, if you prefer, make a donation.

The other items on this page are specific tasks we know of that need volunteers. If you have time and willingness to help with one, or have an item you'd like added, please email tech-council@tug.org by default, or the specific address if one is given. Thanks.

Documentation

First, a summary of some writing projects for which we have detailed descriptions and related references on a separate page.

• Best practice LaTeX for the web.
• Bib(La)TeX style catalogue.
• TikZ tutorials for programmatic drawing.
• LaTeX3 and LuaTeX programming tutorials.
• LaTeX2e reference documentation (https://latexref.xyz).

Other documentation projects:

• Man page updates.
• Collect small sample documents for the standard and other popular LaTeX classes, and for ConTeXt documents too. If you have any to share, please let me know. Other template collections are available.
• It would be good to have an ‘introduction to LaTeX’ document that falls somewhere between the brevity of sample2e.tex and the completeness of A Not So Short Introduction, with a strong focus on practical examples rather than discursive explanations, history, and myriad alternatives.
• The dvips manual needs a systematic description of the specials that are accepted (and examination of the source code to find out what they are). Many are documented, but not all. A review of the manual will no doubt find other updates that are needed also.

One more, independent of all else: the LaTeX WikiBook could always use reviews and contributors.

Fonts

• Make a bold variant for the Concrete font family. There are substitutes but a true boldface would, in addition to making this font more widely useful, also increase the number of complete font families usable for mathematics. (Possibly an approach like the one taken for math, of making changes to the parameters in the Metafont files, would produce a solution.)

TeX programming

• Write an equivalent of cmap.sty for plain TeX, to make searching in PDF output as good as possible. (Suggested by Don Knuth.)
• Write something for plain TeX (running at least on pdftex) to support font expansion and margin kerning as in the LaTeX microtype package. Supporting Computer Modern alone would be useful. This could be used for TUGboat and Texinfo, among others.
• The Lucida macros and documentation need an ongoing maintainer to fix bugs and make improvements. Email lucida-admin@tug.org.
• We can use endless help with TeX4ht in fixing bugs, adding features, improving the documentation, and everything else. Email tex4ht@tug.org.

C(++) programming

• Add collaborative support to TeXworks or another TeX editor, perhaps along the lines of a network-enabled desktop program like SubEthaEdit (similar but nonfree: MoonEdit); or perhaps a web app like Etherpad or sharelatex.
• XeTeX development:
  1. Support variable OpenType fonts, such as the STIXTwoText fonts, which include bold.
  2. Support color emojis, by supporting raster-based OpenType color fonts. This relates to OpenType COLR v1 or SVG tables (references).
• Add good support for JavaScript and/or animations and/or PDF forms to a free (libre) PDF reader. The three features are independent; each is important in its own realm. The MuJS JavaScript interpreter might be a good starting place.
• Supporting OpenType and perhaps TrueType in the long-standing but still widely-used dvips program would be great, i.e., at least conversion to Type42. This has been by VTeX in the xdvipsk project; integration into the upstream dvips (in TeX Live) remains.
• Also dvips: support PDF graphics.
• Also dvips: use subset tags in output font names (see whole thread).
• Both dvips and pdftex: output Type1C, for smaller file sizes.

TUG web site

Email webmaster@tug.org about these:

• The TeX resources on the web page has grown wildly and haphazardly. Systematically checking links and organizing the entries would be great. This would best be done a little at a time, not in one giant effort.
• The mysterious TeX errors page needs some introductory text and general organization.

If you'd like to add an item to this page, or have other questions and suggestions, mail webmaster@tug.org. For general questions and discussion about TeX and related programs, mail texhax@tug.org.