DragonFlyBSD 6.x release status, TeX Live 2026, and document accessibility

Nelson H. F. Beebe beebe at math.utah.edu
Tue Feb 17 15:31:30 PST 2026


I am again working on annual TeX Live builds on numerous operating
systems and CPU types, with a frequently updated report site at

	https://www.math.utah.edu/pub/texlive-utah-2026/

The DragonFlyBSD site at

	https://www.dragonflybsd.org/download/

says

	Releases occur approximately twice a year. 

The DragonFlyBSD 6.4.2 ISO image is dated 10-May-2025, 9 months ago.

I'm prepared to do test builds for TeX Live 2026 on VMs running
DragonFlyBSD 6.4.{0,1,2}, but if a 6.4.3 (or 6.5.0) release is ``just
around the corner'', I would rather wait for that.

In most years, the TeX Live YYYY build season finishes with a code
freeze in late March or early April, so that ISO images can be
created, and DVDs manufactured, in time for the first long-running TeX
conference, BachoTeX in northern Poland, scheduled for 29 April to 3
May 2026.

Can any developers on this list comment on a possible new DragonFlyBSD
release before those dates?  If not, I will try builds on DragonFlyBSD
6.4.2.

----------------------------------------

P.S. For those DragonFlyBSD list readers to whom it matters, a LOT of
work has been going on to improve accessibility of TeXware-produced
PDF files for users with limited physical or visual or audio
abilities.

This has become an urgent matter because the US Federal Government has
set a deadline of 24 April 2026 for government Web sites, and for
federally, or state, supported K--12, college, and university
institution Web sites to conform to the new requirements, which impact
both HTML and PDF document formats.

Nonconforming Web documents that exist before the deadline are
grandfathered in with an exception, but links to them will then be
required to be marked as to ``archived documents''.

In particular, use of lualatex, rather than pdflatex or xelatex, is
now viewed as the only practical way for LaTeX users to reach the
required conformance.  See

	https://latex3.github.io/tagging-project/documentation/usage-instructions

for a recent discussion.

The TeX Live team has a strong interest in making the TeX typesetting
systems freely available to the world, and our annual build tests
smooth the way for O/S and package developers who bundle TeXware in
their distributions.

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- Nelson H. F. Beebe                    Tel: +1 801 581 5254                  -
- University of Utah                                                          -
- Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB    Internet e-mail: beebe at math.utah.edu  -
- 155 S 1400 E RM 233                       beebe at acm.org  beebe at computer.org -
- Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA    URL: https://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe -
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