1st Meeting of the
TeX Users Grpup Portugal

1st meeting report

(Por ter contado com convidados estrangeiros, a língua oficial do evento foi o Inglês, pelo que esta página está também em Inglês!)

The Portuguese TeX community held its first meeting on September 4, 2025, in Évora. Organized in conjunction with INForum 2025, the event brought together academics and professionals who addressed recent developments in LaTeX, documentation workflows, design and typography, as well as the use of artificial intelligence tools in document preparation. This report summarizes the program, participation, and future perspectives of the Portuguese TeX Users Group (TUG-PT).
(See full report in PDF)

Javier Bezos

Title: Recent developments in LaTeX

Abstract

LaTeX2e recently celebrated its 30th anniversary. For the first two decades, the kernel remained largely stable, with minimal bug fixes, but in 2015 development changed significantly: from adding features primarily through standalone packages to directly updating the core system. This shift led to the integration of the original LaTeX3 programming code (known as expl3) in 2020 and, more recently, the adoption of LuaTeX as the recommended engine. We will highlight some of the latest developments, especially the progress of the LaTeX Tagged PDF project, which aims to automatically create PDF/UA-compliant documents.

Short Bio

Javier Bezos is passionate about typography, science, language, and writing systems, as well as about computer programming. As a computer programmer, he has developed tools for technical documentation, automatic typesetting and copyediting, XML, and localization. It is this last facet that he develops most actively as a member of the LaTeX Project Team. He has participated as an author on several style manuals, has published the book “Tipografía y notaciones científicas” and has contributed to “The LaTeX Companion”, 3rd edition. He is na honorary member of the Unión de Correctores, the Spanish professional association of copyeditors, and the Real Sociedad Matemática Española, and currently works at FundéuRAE, a foundation linked to the Real Academia Española.

Paulo Ribeiro

Contractor at NXLog

Title: Documentation toolchains for agile teams

Abstract

In fast-paced IT companies, technical documentation must keep up with ever-evolving products, tight deadlines, and distributed teams. This talk explores how technical communication teams leverage docs-as-code toolchains to produce high-quality, up-to-date, and maintainable documentation. We’ll cover the benefits and trade-offs of open source tooling, strategies for streamlining writing and publishing workflows, and the role of automation in enforcing consistency and quality. Finally, we’ll contrast the goals and practices of technical communication in industry with those of academic and scientific writing that use LaTeX-based workflows, highlighting both common ground and key differences.

José Areia

Polytechnic Institute of Leiria

Title: Developing and Perfecting LaTeX Templates: A Never-Ending Journey

Abstract

Developing and maintaining LaTeX templates is not an easy task. Countless details must be addressed; some within our control, and some not, especially when it comes to users. This talk explores the never-ending journey of creating and refining LaTeX templates, from the early days of the project's inception to the ongoing challenges of maintaining it as a one-person operation. We will discuss the motivations behind the work, the technical and human challenges faced, the strategies for providing user support, and the plans for future development.

João Paulo Barros

Polytechnic Institute of Beja and CTS

Title: The Unseen Support: Creating a LaTeX Template and Navigating Student Doubts

Abstract

This presentation exemplifies the process of designing and supporting a standardised LaTeX template for Master's dissertations and project reports at a polytechnic institute in Portugal. We talk about the structural and stylistic choices we made to make sure everything was consistent and followed institutional rules. We also highlight important lessons we learnt from working directly with students. We want to show that direct user feedback is important for the template to be improved and kept up to date by sharing these findings.