May21 TUG news: conferences, TUGboat, dvd, VPAT, CTAN

[TeX Users Group]

Dear TeXers,

May is upon us. Here in the US the vaccination campaign is efficiently
decreasing the level of the pandemic, though there is far to go. The
European Union after a slow start also picks up its vaccination
campaign. However, worldwide COVID is far from being conquered. Our
hearts are with our colleagues and friends in India and other countries
experiencing a dangerous new wave.

TUG2021, as we announced earlier, will be held online on August 5--8:
https://tug.org/tug2021/

Registration is open (no cost), and the call for papers is posted 
(deadline June 24): https://tug.org/tug2021/callforpapers.html
Please send in presentation proposals sooner rather than later
if possible. It greatly helps in planning.

Also, the 15th ConTeXt meeting will take place on September 20--25 in
Bassenge, Belgium; the call for papers: 
https://meeting.contextgarden.net/2021/

In other news, TUGboat 42:1 is with the printers; printed copies should
go out by the end of the month. It is going to be a very interesting
issue. The next issue will be the proceedings of TUG2021.

In addition, the TeX Collection DVD, containing TeX Live, MacTeX,
proTeXt/MiKTeX, and a CTAN snapshot, is at the manufacturer's and can be
ordered now from TUG:
https://tug.org/texcollection/

Many users have been for quite some time asking us for an
Accessibility Conformance Report based on VPAT templates.  It
increasingly becomes a requirement for the use of TeX tools in a
government related context for many countries.  We started the effort
of drafting one (https://github.com/TeXUsersGroup/TeX-VPAT).  If you
want to join it, please write to me at president at tug.org.

New packages on CTAN in April:
- beamerthemelalic, a beamer theme for LALIC;
- byo-twemojis, `Build Your Own Twemojis' with TikZ;
- dimnum, commands for dimensionless numbers;
- dynbrackets, commands to simplify the syntax of dynamic math brackets;
- figchild, pictures for creating children's activities;
- huawei, template for Huawei documents;
- mahjong, typeset Mahjong Tiles using MPSZ Notation;
- ninecolors, select colors with proper WCAG color contrast;
- tipauni, producing Unicode characters with TIPA commands;
- tlmgr-intro-zh-cn, a short tutorial on using tlmgr in Chinese;
- worldflags, drawing the world's flags with TikZ;
- xintsession, interactive computing sessions (fractions, floating
  points, polynomials).

Happy TeXing!

Boris Veytsman
TUG President