Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #speedatapublisher, aggregated by home.social.
New blog post: A page looks innocent: the algorithms behind a typeset page
This is a somewhat interactive blog post about typesetting algorithms.
https://news.speedata.de/2026/10/18/anatomy-of-a-page/
#boxesandglue #speedatapublisher #typography #pdf #algorithms
I have added an interactive tour on the web page, so you can try out how the layout rules work.
https://www.speedata.de/en/tour/
It uses the speedata Publisher API to create PDFs without installation.
Version 5.8 released. Here is a short writeup:
https://news.speedata.de/2026/08/17/version-5_8_released/
(Mostly bug fixes, some small new features)
I tried to create a #Debian package from #Speedatapublisher but after the dismissing of the Debian repo the make install instrunctions are no longer available. Never mind I set a local environmnet.
The good news is that #FreeBSD is shipping ** Speedata Publisher** in the third party repo making the perfect solution to work with it, as a designer or to deploy a #Speedata Publisher server.
If you want run publisher into an Opensource ecosystem seamlessly you can do it with FreeBSD.
#runbsd 😈
I have restructured the speedata Publisher manual, because there was something missing in the manual, although I thought it was complete. After some research I found out about the Diátaxis model for technical writing which analyses the documentation usage.
See here for a writeup:
https://news.speedata.de/2026/08/13/diataxis-manual/
Version 5.6 of the speedata Publisher is out! About 100 days of work since the last stable, 25 patch releases in between, and a lot of new stuff.
XPath now does arrays and maps, variable fonts work, tables got a few nice things (colspan="*", row colors that don't drift across pages), there is a progress bar, placeholder images, and a bunch more.
Long writeup here: https://news.speedata.de/2026/06/03/version-5_6_released/
Grab a coffee, it is a big one.
The speedata Publisher has now more verbose change logs. With the new documentation, I add a summary line, a more detailed description and, if possible, links to related commits. Hopefully this makes it easier to see what has changed. See
https://doc.speedata.de/publisher/en/manual/changelog/version-5/
for example.
If nobody complains, I will remove the deb packages from the distribution. The ZIP file is (and will be) the preferred way to download the package.
I have moved the documentation from asciidoctor to markdown (using Hugo instead of a self-created static site generator). Also, reorganized the structure and fixed a lot of wording.
It now builds in less than a second and has live preview, which makes it much nicer to edit..
Version 5.5.2 released. Enhanced PDF/UA accessibility and fixed a few bugs.
Download at https://download.speedata.de
Version 5.4 released!
from the news.md file (vs 5.2):
* Massive speed improvements!
* More unit testing and refactoring
* More HTML/CSS support
* More XPath functions
* Section element to structure layout
* New VScode extension (separate repository)
* Fix margin protrusion (also harfbuzz mode)
* Letterspacing
There is a new (optional) <Section> element for structuring the speedata layout.xml file. It does not produce a different output.
See https://news.speedata.de/2026/02/23/section-element/ for details.
Massive speed improvements. The last benchmarking led me to reworking the code and I got some major improvements:
1m25 seconds for a 1828 pages catalog (previously 5 minutes)
32 seconds for a bible (719 pages Arabic), previously 47 secons.
Identical output.
Version 5.3.22
Typst does 500 pages in 157 milliseconds. My own engine needs 4.4 seconds. So why would anyone use the slower tool?
Because "how many pages per second" is the wrong question. The right question is "how many pages until you need a human to check."
I wrote up the full benchmark with 6 PDF engines: https://news.speedata.de/2026/02/10/typesetting-benchmark/
#speedatapublisher #typst #fop #TeXLaTeX #weasyprint #benchmark
I’ve switched off GitHub sponsorship on my profile for the moment.
Thanks a ton for your generous support of speedata Publisher. Don’t worry: the build machine keeps humming, and development stays steady. 🙂
New blog post on https://news.speedata.de/2025/11/24/macossigningerror/:
I rebuilt the macOS packages of the speedata Publisher and fixed some tricky notarization/signing issues.
macOS is now at 5.2.1, Windows/Linux stay at 5.2.0.
If you’re interested in macOS notarization for CLI tools, this one’s for you.
@tajpulo is now talking about digital typesetting on the Grazer LinuxTage https://streaming.media.ccc.de/glt25/i1
#glt25 #digitalTypesetting #speedatapublisher
Standard interchange image format for Open Source DTP
Hi people,
with all the mayor GUI #DTP software reaching their peak: #GIMP, #Scribus and #Inkscape; and the well established #TeX software #ConTeXt and #SpeedataPublisher, and #ImageMagick we need a serious discussion about which image format we should adopt that works seamlessly across all these applications and it is generally accepted in the press workflow, whereas is embedded or not into a PDF file.
It should be something that has good quality, supports #CMYK and Alpha channels and it is #opensource friendly and perhaps an #openstandard.
I would dare to say that perhaps jpeg2000 matches most of them, it exists from a very long time and can be adopted as common ground, however it is need a combined effort, if what I am writing makes sense for you.
ImageMagick supports it, Gimp 3 currently doesn't, #LuaTeX and #LuaMetaTeX neither. I guess that Inkscape once it will be able to export in CMYK it will decide which format using to store images in CMYK with alpha into a PDF.
It would be very beneficial if we can adopt a format that works everywhere and it is press friendly, thanks.
Testing Gimp 3 Out...
I am testing #Gimp 3 out (#appimage) to see how I can integrate it in my new workflow.
The new #GEGL framework is much better of anything else, but still in rough shape, anyway I am totally impressed, potentially GEGL can do almost anything, now it is just a matter of time (and love 🥰).
Exporting in #JPG, #JXL and #TIFF in #CMYK is feasible although not so intuitive, however #ImageMagick was unable to convert the last two in PDF... I am on #Devuan stable which means #Debian stable, my #ImageMagick version might miss new features.
You can apply GEGL operations on a group and those are inherited by the sub-layers, and this is good and expected.
I had some confusion while exporting in grayscale. The soft proofing wasn't working even though active and the dialog would asked me to save in CMYK which doesn't make sense.
The whole topic about CMYK, besides Gimp itself, looks very confusing to me. I need CMYK because my software, for instance #SpeedataPublisher can't convert from RGB in CMYK. The purpose is because I need to go on offset printing and it is expected to prepare four plates for each colors (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black[Y]); However I could need to go just black and white (grayscale) thus if I have already a grayscale image what is the purpose to export in CMYK? Nothing.
I would recommend to change this line to Press Output and to add more voices such as: Grayscale; CMYK; CMYK + Spot Colors.
Version 5.0 of the speedata has been released. There is a short announcement online:
https://news.speedata.de/2025/03/12/version-5-released/
Major changes since version 4
* Integration of HarfBuzz
* Full accessibility support.
* A rewritten XML and XPath 2.0 parser.
* Attachment of ZUGFeRD invoices.
* Greatly enhance enhance various subsystems such as HTML, MetaPost integration and paragraph builder.
* SAAS available with the speedata Pro plan.
All layouts should work without changes.
Since the speedata Publisher is now completely bug free, I have released version 5.0 now. More information will follow!
I am thinking about an additional speedata Publisher frontend.
Up to now, the layout and data are both encoded in XML. With a good XML editor, this makes writing layouts a breeze.
I know that some people are uncomfortable with that, so I am thinking about a Lua API instead of the XML API. See
https://github.com/speedata/publisher/discussions/651
for a discussion and a tiny example (just a draft).
I have tried some of the more famous AI chats to generate a simple ‚Hello world' layout. The result was as I expected…
See https://news.speedata.de/2025/02/04/speedatapublisherai/ for my findings.
The speedata Publisher has finally a fix for the Adobe Acrobat display error when mixing (table) rules and background.
https://github.com/speedata/publisher/issues/644
#speedatapublisher #adobeacrobat
Left: before right: now
I have just released the stable version 4.20 of the speedata Publisher!
Half a year of work, 150 commits and 40 minor releases it is time for a stable release. Now I will focus on the last remaining bugs and hopefully release version 5 by March.
Main updates include #ZUGFeRD enhancements, accessibility support and stricter XPath/XML handling.
See the news at https://news.speedata.de/2025/01/15/version-4-20-release/
Download at download.speedata.de, as always.
Just in time for the end of the year I was finally able to finalize the final piece of my project.
Now I have a background of the pages that dinamically changes based on certain conditions.
The code is not elegant as I would, but it works as expected and this is fundamental.
Thus the whole code is "ready", now I can focus on the marketing stuff.
I look forward to make this project finally taking of!
#2025 I am coming!
#designwithopensource #DTP #speedatapublisher #freesoftware #tex
The speedata Publisher now has new semantics for accessing XML data structure stored within variables. See https://news.speedata.de/2024/09/04/setvariablesemantic/ for details. This might break backwards compatibility and you might need to update your layouts.
#speedatapublisher
speedata Publisher and font expansion. New blog post on
The speedata Publisher has now much better support for accessibility and tagged PDF
That news is quite old, but it is the sad reality that you don't own proprietary software even though you pay for...
Since you have coding skills you may find yourself more comfortable using #SpeedataPublisher
www.speedata.de
Releasing the new stable version 4.18 (after 24 minor releases).
The biggest changes compared to 4.16 is the new XML/XPath parser (now default) and the default font loader HarfBuzz. Both things are a major step forward.
Here is the link to the announcement: https://news.speedata.de/2024/04/22/release-speedata-publisher-4-18/
Download at https://download.speedata.de
Releasing the new stable version 4.18 (after 24 minor releases).
The biggest changes compared to 4.16 is the new XML/XPath parser (now default) and the default font loader HarfBuzz. Both things are a major step forward.
A more detailed announcement will follow on Monday.
Download at https://download.speedata.de
Page shuffling with the speedata Publisher: re-arrange pages from a PDF
Markdown support in the speedata Publisher and a layout “quine”. New blog post at https://news.speedata.de/2024/03/01/markdown/
A somewhat lengthy blog post about integration of Lua and Go (with LuaTeX) https://news.speedata.de/2024/02/21/mixinggoandlua/
Mostly about creating wrapper libraries in Go and Lua to extend the functionality of the rather limited Lua standard library and its lack of Unicode handling.
New stable version 4.16 now available. It took about half a year and contains lots of bug fixes but also some major improvements, see https://news.speedata.de/2024/01/08/new_version_4_16/
The roadmap towards version 5 of the speedata Publisher
https://news.speedata.de/2023/11/15/last-stable-before-xpath-change/
Short: big new release (version 5) planned for early 2024!
I have just uploaded a new version (4.15.8) of the speedata Publisher which has a major change: there is a completely rewritten XPath parser which is faster, more robust and offers more functionality.
See the news at https://news.speedata.de/2023/11/01/newxpathparser/
The version 4.16 will include a complete rewrite of the MetaPost subsystem with much more flexibility:
* image inclusion of .mp files will interpret the file
* text can be included in mp images to match the document's font settings
* variables can be passed to MetaPost (useful for diagrams etc.)
See the (currently two) examples at
https://github.com/speedata/examples/tree/master/metapost
Available in the version 4.15.4 as a preview.
Dear typographers, how wide is a thin space and a hair space?
I am trying to implement U+2009 THIN SPACE and U+200A HAIR SPACE, but is there a width definition?
* Wikipedia writes 1⁄5 or 1⁄6 em for thin space.
* https://www.fontshop.com/content/adventures-in-space_spaces writes 1/8 em for thin space and 1/24 for hair space.
Is there an somewhat official guide?
There will be a short presentation of the speedata Publisher tomorrow at the Grazer Linuxtage #glt23 #speedatapublisher