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The new TeX.SX community blog has been launched.

Which subjects do you suggest it should deal with? What would you like to see there? Which topics would you enjoy reading about - the site, the site's topic, its users, books, ...?

I make the question Community Wiki. Separate answers for suggested content and voting for them could help in choosing topics.

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  • This isn't a "what" but a "how": Since users on here have greatly varying levels of expertise overall and on specific topics, so it might be helpful if blog posts somehow indicate their "level of difficulty", like: "This is a hellishly complicated tikz-post" and "This is a basic mathmode-post" (probably standardized levels).
    – doncherry
    Jul 1, 2011 at 19:10

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Highlighting really cool answers that show off a neat trick that has wide applicability.

Examples:

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"Case studies": Real-life (or made up, but realistic) examples of interesting TeX problems and how they were solved.

Example: Submitting a journal article as a single tex file

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    As a TeX newbie, I don't want to just see "how I solved X" (which I do want to see) but also "Here's my cool final product and how I got there". The latter type of case study is especially valuable to users still trying to get their heads around how to approach certain kinds of projects.
    – HedgeMage
    Jul 7, 2011 at 4:19
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We could invite authors of classes or packages to be our guest and write a text about that class or package (collection) - why it's been developed, how is the history, what is planned for the future. Just one example: there might be much to tell about the oberdiek bundle, which consists of 90 packages.

It's bit similar to interviews - however, regarding specific work instead of the person itself.

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Pointing out interesting new packages or updated functionality of existing packages.

One can follow comp.tex.ctan.announce (as I do) but there usually isn't much detail in the announcements, and it would be good to have some filtering to highlight the especially interesting stuff (eg, at the level of one package mentioned per month).

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TeX.sx bugwatch: highlighting when bugs are found and fixed on TeX.sx (either by the authors or patches by other members of the community.)

There's been a few siunitx bugs that have cropped up here. And a couple of biblatex bugs too...

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Important resolutions that have been agreed upon on meta concerning voting, editing, commenting, closing and other policies.

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Highlighting state of the art packages and novel approaches in solving different problems. Mentioning also obsoleted packages or inferior ones - explaining problems behind using them.

Example:

  • τאbu (tabu) for flexible tabulars
  • subfig - (mostly) superseded by subcaption, which does not have hyperref problems
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Unveil and explain new developments, such as

  • new or not yet widely known TeX engines, such as LuaTeX

  • new or not yet commonly used TeX formats, such as ConTeXt

  • TeX implementations on new hardware platforms, such as on the iPad

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Since there are questions about book recommendations, such as the What is the best book to start learning LaTeX? (44 upvotes) and Which manuals are on your “TeX Reference” shelf? (27), there could be reviews on LaTeX books on the blog.

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  • If you would like to, feel free to add this to my "tools and helpers" list, this is just the kind of thing I had in mind!
    – doncherry
    Jul 1, 2011 at 20:18
  • @doncherry: Yes, why not! However, paper books and tools/online resources differ, let's keep it a bit separate. Here, in a big list with separate CW answers, voting can help to push much desired topics up, in an informative way. So just here I think let's only make summaries (which are often good) if topics are very closely related.
    – Stefan Kottwitz Mod
    Jul 1, 2011 at 21:17
  • Agreed. I was thinking of online books like the Not So Short, but paper books is a different category.
    – doncherry
    Jul 2, 2011 at 12:17
  • @doncherry: I agree and also think they are different. Everybody can look at online books himself (so links with short descriptions could be sufficient), for paper books this would be harder (going to a shop, library), so good and extensive reviews are helpful.
    – Stefan Kottwitz Mod
    Jul 2, 2011 at 12:21
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Interviews of expert TeX users could be very interesting. Even if they are not users of our site: we can learn about them and about their role in TeX's history - and they get to know our site and might contribute.

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  • Would this not rather compete with the TUG 'interview corner'?
    – Joseph Wright Mod
    Jul 1, 2011 at 20:56
  • @Joseph: Some competition and variety is good. And there might be many interesting TeX people in the world not yet appearing in the TUG corner. Of course I think of people speaking here who did not give interviews yet.
    – Stefan Kottwitz Mod
    Jul 1, 2011 at 21:09
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(Major) updates or lesser-known features of tex.sx's functionality, e.g.

  • changes and tricks in comment markup (vs. post markup), e.g. there are some (series of) characters that aren't straightforward to get.
  • When you insert a full length link to a question in a comment, it gets shortened and the question is displayed as a mouseover-tooltip.
  • the <kbd> markup
  • things listed in StackExchange secret pages
  • similarly with above link (I just noticed that): I inserted the full URL and just the question title is displayed
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(Illustrated?) Reviews of TeX tools and helpers like

  • editors
  • viewers
  • services like crocodoc
  • great off-CTAN manuals and introductions
  • interesting posts on other blogs (perhaps in a special, very brief format)
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Actions of Stack Exchange Inc. which are specifically about TeX.SX, such as

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