Enjoy TeX pearls diving!

A permanent call for TeX beauties and oddities

By Toni Walter

• short TeX, MetaFont or MetaPost macro/macros (half A4 page or half a screen at most),
• the code should be generic, potentially understandable by plain-oriented users,
• results need not be useful or serious, but language-specific, tricky, preferably non-obvious,
• obscure oddities, weird TeX behaviour, dirty and risky tricks and traps are also welcome,
• the code should be explainable in a couple of minutes.

Already collected pearls can be found below. All pearl-divers and pearl-growers are kindly asked to send the pearl-candidates to pearls@gust.org.pl, where Paweł Jackowski, the pearl-collector, is waiting impatiently. The pearls market-place is active the entire year, not just before annual BachoTeX Conference.

Note: The person submitting pearl proposals and/or participating pearls session during BatchoTeX meeting needs not necessarily be the inventor. Well known hits are also welcome, unless already presented.

Since some seasoned TeX programmers felt indignant of calling ugly TeX constructs “Pearls of TeX programming”, we decided not to irritate them any longer. We hope they will accept “TeX beauties and oddities” as the session title.

If you yourself have something that fits the bill, please consider. If you know somebody's work that does, please let us know, we will contact the person. We await your contributions even if you are unable to attend the conference. In such a case you are free either to elect one of the participants to present your work or “leave the proof to the gentle reader” (cf., e.g., http://www.aurora.edu/mathematics/bhaskara.htm).

Needless to say that all contributions will be published in a separate section of the conference proceedings, possibly also reprinted in different TeX bulletins.

• Pearls 2005
• Pearls 2006
• Pearls 2007
• Pearls 2008