Call for Papers - Practical TeX 2006

This conference (like its predecessors Practical TeX 2005, Practical TeX 2004 and TeX NorthEast) is focused on practical use of LaTeX, ConTeXt, MetaPost, and the rest of the TeX system.

If you'd like to make a presentation at the conference, please submit a title and abstract via email (plain ASCII is fine, or any TeX format) to practex06@tug.org by May 1, 2006. Any TeX-related topic is welcome.

Preprints or slides received by June 15, 2006 (PDF and sources preferred), will be included in the conference program. The final proceedings will be prepared as a TUGboat issue, after the conference. Presentations without formal papers are also entirely welcome at the conference.

General topics

LaTeX and all of the TeX family of programs are often seen as a difficult tool set requiring a fair amount of training, a notion we would like to dispel. So, we'd like to suggest the following guidelines for presentations:

• plan for an audience comprised mostly of users, rather than developers;
• emphasize typical usage, rather than esoteric features;
• show techniques with immediate applicability for users, rather than prospects still in development;
• give participants a path for learning further on their own, after the conference is over.

Since this year we are not having a day of classes before the conference (instead having a full LaTeX workshop the previous week, we especially welcome tutorial presentations on any topic: for instance, LaTeX and LaTeX packages, fonts, ConTeXt, MetaPost, or whatever is of interest. We'll plan to schedule tutorial presentations on the first day of talks.

Organizing for productivity

Many users new to the world of TeX, LaTeX, etc., probably find some distribution (and perhaps an editor that may or may not come with the distribution) and dive in producing TeX-based documents without a lot of explicit thought about organizing and, over time, improving their work environment, tools, and processes.

Thus, we are calling for papers in the area we are calling organizing for productivity. This is deliberately a broad and vague title. But the general idea is to focus less on detailed techniques for producing bits of typography, and more on mechanisms for repeated, convenient use of any technique.

Please tell us if you are interested in writing a paper that you think fits this topic, or one in another area. Thanks!