Conference Talks → 🇵🇱

In this talk, I will discuss the recent state of the T_EX community in Japan. First, as background, I will introduce some distinctive characteristics of Japanese typesetting compared to Western typesetting, and briefly explain how T_EX systems tailored for Japanese have addressed these differences. Following this, I will describe recent trends in communication within the Japanese T_EX community, as well as how it is adapting to the active development of LaT_EX.

The presentation about over thirty years of GUST history: key events and achievements, but above all, the people who created this organization.

A special place in this history belongs to the conferences in Bachotek, with their jubilee thirtieth edition providing a perfect opportunity for such a summary. For three decades, Bachotek has been not only a venue for annual meetings but a true center of integration and a melting pot where ideas, inspirations, and temperaments mixed—sometimes explosively, always creatively. In this T_EX cauldron, discussions simmered, ideas bubbled, and solutions brewed, which, when seasoned with the passion and knowledge of both Polish and international participants, transformed into initiatives shaping the activities of GUST and the international T_EX community.

The main theme of the presentation is the commitment and passion of members — people for whom typography and quality have always been paramount values, and who through their work have significantly influenced the shape of digital typography.

Letters, letters. From letters, words. These carry meanings. Can we emphasize the meaning of a word or change its meaning with graphic elements? Shape, color, or the context in which we place the word? Of course! I propose a graphic play with the written word, during which we will add pictorial comments to words of your choice. No need to talk, I'll show examples of such fun in Bachotek.

We will talk about pipes :‑)

I won't answer that question, but I will attempt to shed light on the role of lettering in comics. Text in "colorful booklets" follows its own rules and is often handwritten, so the primary task of a letterer is to write the text in a way that is both legible and aesthetically arranged within the speech bubble. Publishers employed individuals with calligraphic skills to imbue letters with a unique style or to emphasize certain lines of dialogue. In modern times, the role of the letterer has largely been supplanted by computer fonts; however, someone has to create these fonts.​ Computer processing has significantly accelerated the production of comic books, contributing to the proliferation of titles in the market. The ease of integrating text into comics using digital tools has streamlined the creation process, allowing for quicker turnaround times and increased output. However, this convenience sometimes leads to a lack of proper attention to detail, resulting in text that may not always look right. During the presentation, I will show examples of both hand-lettered and digitally lettered speech bubbles, highlighting the challenges associated with each method. Additionally, I will present a selection of comic fonts.

Early 2025 I decided to finally apply an already old feature in LuaMetaT_EX to the ConT_EXt code base on a larger scale than originally intended. When explaining some details to an interested co-developer, we realized that the fact that there is some Polish involvement in that makes for a nice introduction to this feature at BachoT_EX. It has a bit education aspect too.

By now, those coming to BachoT_EX probably know that ConT_EXt and many of its features relate to typesetting educational materials. Of the many aspects that one has to deal with in that environment, attractive documents is one of them.

A few decades ago a mechanism called ‘column sets’ was implemented that offered a mix of automated and manual controlled makeup of pages with plenty images in various columns, possibly operating on spreads. It's one of the alternative output routines we have. This MkII mechanism was adapted to MkIV and later to MkXL.

However, when we worked on better looking math and a more advanced par builder, we already had set our eyes on improving column sets. Among the fact that some users wanted more of it, there was also a strong educational incentive. It is also one of the areas where high quality rendering still matters and likely T_EX has some future (in addition to self publishing, where users also are willing to spend time on getting it right).

The official release of the upgrade is at the next ConT_EXt meeting but here we show the current state in a real (educational) application. This also demonstrates our approach: working from various complex and demanding real documents. In this talk we stick to the high level interface and the features that we need which in turn will lead to extending the engine.

The ConT_EXt macro package sits in a niche where users have high demands, which then drives development. Of course we need to keep in mind that specific featured fit in the user interface, don't impact performance, and don't mess up the code base.

As a side track of column sets (the previous talk) we came back to long standing requests for parallel documents. Over time various solutions have been provided but all were kind if isolated (in order not to interfere), tested in limited situations and once the user had the job done, these solutions sort of got lost or just idled. Some persistent dedication is needed here.

When we wanted to test column sets and performance we did that on parallel texts. There are not that many resources that can challenge us but the bible is one of them, because it has been translated in many languages. In this talk we show some of what was done over a century ago and see to what extend we can handle some of that automatically. We will show some of our tests and use that to draw the lines of where to stop being automatic and when to bring in some user control.

We continue our talk about column sets with how we achieved the objectives: adding some new mechanisms to LuaMetaT_EX. The original approach of column sets used the page builder in combination with picking up the pieces and filling in the areas used for text.

But this time we took a different route, using ideas that came up while we worked on the par builder. By stepwise pushing our demands to the limits we came to satisfying solutions that fit our demands: predictable high quality rendering of column sets.

In this talk we will show some of the new low level features that make this possible, so we're talking primitives and routines round them. We might kick in some discussion about where we decided to stop being fancy at the cost of the mechanism becoming unpredictable.

The ConT_EXt system is a very advanced tool for professional typesetting and document processing, used both in practice and in academic environments.

Working with the ConT_EXt typographic system allows students to gain insight into typographic principles and effective document creation.

The lecture will present courses taught in the past and present at Mendel University in Brno, whose content was or is the ConT_EXt or the programming language Lua.

An integral part of some courses are student semester projects providing practical application of acquired knowledge. There will be no shortage of examples of what students have created or how they have been involved in the development of ConT_EXt.

Those interested in deeper knowledge of ConT_EXt or in the development of applications for ConT_EXt can also deal with this issue as part of their bachelor's or master's theses. In the last few years, students have worked on several interesting areas; these implemented bachelor's theses topics will also be mentioned.

Finally, two styles for ConT_EXt, ctx-thesis and bib.sty, will be briefly introduced, which also make life much easier for other students when writing and formatting their final thesis.

Handwriting is one of the oldest methods of recording information, serving as a primary means of communication and a fundamental skill in education for centuries. However, with technological advancements and the widespread adoption of computers, handwriting is gradually becoming less common.​

In today's digital era, the differences between handwriting and typing are increasingly scrutinized. Both methods are still employed in schools, universities, and workplaces, each offering distinct advantages and disadvantages. But is one superior to the other?

Is it still worth nurturing the skill of handwriting?

This academic year is special, we had to teach LaT_EX & Cie. to students who already got first experience with these typesetting systems. First we explain how we chose quite advanced topics. We finish off by commenting feedback from students.

In music, a cluster is a chord comprising at least three adjacent notes of a scale. Cluster can be diatonic or chromatic, there also exist clusters from whole-tone scales. We show and discuss some notations for clusters in music scores from a point of view related to typography.

These last years, getting materials for printed proceedings has been difficult. We propose some discussion about possible ways to improve that.

When we set out to make the full resources of GUST e-Foundry available—including fonts and the software for creating them—we quickly realized that proper documentation was crucial. Ryszard Kubiak took charge of this task. To make the documentation as clear as possible, he decided he needed to understand the semantics of fonts. However, the beasts inhabiting the realm of fonts—as well as the tiny monsters known in jargon as bugs—made this lofty goal quite a challenge.

In my talk, I will share what we have managed to understand and what remains a mystery. Fortunately, by skillfully navigating through the areas haunted by these creatures, we have succeeded in making our software behave in a predictable manner.

For the past few years, we have been working—most recently, Ryszard Kubiak and I—on making GUST fonts and the accompanying font creation software publicly accessible. In this talk, I will briefly outline the current state of our work and, using one of the GUST fonts as an example, demonstrate how our software is used.

Work on Fontplant is well advanced. Fontplant correctly generates Latin Modern, T_EX Gyre, and Antykwa Półtawskiego fonts. The documentation for the Python part of Fontplant, called 'Fontplant Story', is also nearing completion. During the presentation, I will share my experiences while creating the 'Fontplant Story': what went well, what challenges I faced, what I’m not satisfied with, and whether things could have been done differently.

There is a lot of talk about tagged PDF in education and how to support it in T_EX but when we ask a teenager a about what it is, puzzlement is our reward. For kids accessibility means something else, as does a talk about such hypes. So, when asked what to talk about instead, we ended up with flagged PDF instead. Be surprised.

This presentation provides an overview of our 18-year experience in developing an internal system based on T_EX at a Japanese cram school. The presenter, a chemistry teacher specializing in university entrance exam preparation, has been actively involved in designing and maintaining this system. While T_EX is widely employed for creating educational materials in such subjects as mathematics and physics, we have extended its use across all subjects, including classical Chinese (Kanbun)—a vertically written ancient script.

Rather than adopting mainstream distributions like T_EX Live, we have created a compact, customized T_EX distribution tailored to our specific needs. This distribution, bundled with proprietary packages and applications designed to address our specialized requirements, is deployed to each computer from our file server on a regular basis.

Additionally, I serve as a member of the T_EXShop development team—an open-source T_EX editor for macOS—and have modified its source code to align it with our internal requirements and distribute it across our network. This cohesive ecosystem achieves seamless vertical integration among macOS, T_EX, and the editor, optimizing their collective strengths. Consequently, all staff members, regardless of technological expertise, can efficiently utilize our T_EX-based platform.

In this presentation, I will provide detailed insights into the development of our T_EX-based system, demonstrating the versatility of T_EX beyond its conventional role in typesetting academic documents. This approach highlights T_EX's potential to support diverse educational applications.

French education system emphacises strongly written and oral rhetoric skills. Pupils are expected to follow a large set of rules whenever writing one of the three kind of written tests they have to master. Letting pupils to play the teacher and mark a fictive work helps them coping with those expectations. I call it "exercice de correction" (marking exercises).

I will show how ConT_EXt is used to generate different kind of sheets: documents analized by the fictive pupil, his own works (two versions: clean and with my annotations), an empty marking grid, and one I filled in.

Two years ago, I introduced at BachoT_EX exercise sheets I designed for my 12-years old pupils at the Lycée français in Warsaw. They are based on a crossword; answers have to be searched in the manual, in a calligramme and a photo. This year I went a step further, asking 13-years old pupils to compose their own exercise sheets based on a small team's exploration of the manual. I surely can not ask them to fill a lua style sheet or ConT_EXt sources. I will show, to what extend I succeeded in turning their works into exercise sheets.

Leaving aside electronic methods of communication and knowledge preservation, I will speak about paper. Paper, as a medium for printed information, was expected to be eliminated; however, with the expansion of computers, its usage has been increasing.

Let's enjoy origami — another kind of paper creation besides documents.

Participants will immerse themselves into Lettering.

Hands on as per title.

ConT_EXt is a typographic system that combines high flexibility and an intuitive approach to document creation, and is therefore suitable for preparing many different types of documents.

At the workshop, you will learn the principles of working in ConT_EXt and, as part of your first steps, you will try to make a bookmark for a book, a diary for writing experiences, and we will show you a style (module) for setting up university theses.

Although the workshop is oriented towards beginners, it can also provide inspiration for more advanced users.

What to install for the workshop? T_EXLive 2025 or the current ConT_EXt installation from the contextgarden.net are the most convenient.

Polish is widely regarded as an extremely difficult language for foreigners. When someone unfamiliar with it sees Polish signs or hears the language spoken, saying they're confused is an understatement.

But if you take the opportunity to join this workshop, you'll soon be the one surprising others—by confidently pronouncing Polish words and writing down what you hear in conversations going on around you among Poles.

A workshop/meeting devoted to the very task of publishing the T_EX Gyre & Fontplant projects on Github is needed. Let it be open to everyone. I hope to get advice from people who have experience with such things and also wishes from those inexperienced.

Selecting and copying a 12th-century initial adorned with arabesques using broad-edged writing tools such as sticks, reeds, and nibs. It is possible to combine Willy's workshop ideas with mine, allowing participants to personalize their notebooks, constructed during the bookbinding workshops, with such an initial.