Markus Writes on KOMA-Script and Friends

The new Blog is online

Fri, 26 Jun 2026 10:54:00 +0200

The new blog has been live here on “KOMA-Script and Friends” since yesterday. It all started when I came across an interesting post while cleaning up the old blog and decided to find a new home for it. The solution was to launch the blog section of hugo-book.

Since the previous blog in the “KOMA-Script Documentation Project” was published exclusively in German, I won’t be translating any old posts—with very few exceptions, such as the one mentioned above. New posts will also appear in English only in exceptional cases.

Wow!

Tue, 09 Jun 2015 20:07:22 +0200

I congratulate Dr. Ingeborg Syllm-Rapoport on her newly earned doctorate. That was a courageous and admirable step. Especially in light of her own explanation of why she decided to take this step, I can only say: “Hats off!” Giving the victims—not the criminals of that time—the last word deserves our attention.

Why hasn't there been a new KOMA script in a year?

Wed, 24 Jul 2013 20:07:02 +0200

That’s a good question, and there’s only one—rather poor—answer to it: Because I don’t have any need for it myself.

The fact is that, for decades, I’ve been creating everything from architectural plans to novels using LaTeX, and I almost always use KOMA-Script for that. For years now, however, KOMA-Script has been able to do everything I need. Furthermore, the number of documents I create is steadily decreasing; or rather, I’m creating the same types of documents over and over again, just with different content. As a result, I can no longer test new features in KOMA-Script sufficiently well in my daily work. Even if I use the current beta version of KOMA-Script for all my documents, I’ll therefore hardly find any new bugs.

Am I crazy?

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 22:20:20 +0200

A few minutes ago, I received an email in which an acquaintance and self-proclaimed KOMA-Script user asked me point-blank if I’d gone crazy. Well, that’s a good question.

The background was that I’d told this person about all the volunteer work I do—ranging from my church involvement to various “Hey, can you watch our two youngest kids on Saturday?”—“Sure, why not!”—to my open-source work, and even to: “The template for https://bitsandbytesoninternetarepatient.invalid is sooo off the mark when it comes to how you’re supposed to do things with KOMA-Script; I absolutely have to set aside a day to show that poor user who fell for it how it’s really done.” When was the last time I read a book? Hard to believe—two weeks ago!

Where on the page was the index entry created?

Sat, 28 May 2011 14:07:39 +0200

At yesterday’s TeX meetup in Ladenburg—curiously enough, the Heidelberg TeX meetup has been taking place in my neighboring town for several years now—I was shown a beautiful, old Latin grammar book. What was particularly nice about it was the index. Next to the page numbers were small superscript numbers indicating whether the corresponding index entry was located in the first, second, third, or fourth quarter of the page. This actually makes it easier to search the page. When you consider that 100 years ago the entire index was still compiled by hand, you can imagine what a labor-intensive task that was.

How much does komascript.de cost?

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 07:51:59 +0100

Almost two years ago, someone asked me how much it costs me to run komascript.de. As I’ve often pointed out, I don’t actually run komascript.de. The domain itself has been provided for years by Robin, who also covers the costs for the domain. komascript.de is hosted on tohserver.com. This is a private project funded by private individuals. Raymond bears the financial risk and also administers the system, which can sometimes turn into an enormous amount of work—especially when I have yet another special request or some other silly question. So komascript.de is financed and run by just a few private individuals. The amazing thing is that these people derive practically no personal benefit from komascript.de. Once a year, Raymond passes around the virtual collection jar in the hope that he won’t be left alone to cover the costs of several hundred euros. This year, he has also announced that a hardware upgrade will soon be necessary. If any of you who benefit from komascript.de would like to contribute to the costs, please feel free to contact me by email.