A font with built-in TeX syntax highlighting

A researcher at TUG2025 unveiled a wild color font that auto-highlights TeX code—no plugins, no heavy tools, just the font. It’s inspired by an HTML/CSS version by Heikki Lotvonen and uses clever OpenType tricks (think: letters changing based on neighbors) to paint macros and symbols in living color. It even ships in two flavor packs and covers plain TeX, LaTeX2, and LaTeX3. Nerdy? Yes. But the comments turned it into a full-on vibe check.

On one side: starry-eyed delight. One early reaction simply declared it “Fascinating,” waving the rainbow flag for novelty. On the other: the editor diehards who want highlighting handled by their tools, not a font. “This font is not useful for me,” snapped a purist, sparking the classic “fonts vs features” feud. Meanwhile, gwern stepped in with librarian energy to note it’s different from the previous viral font, keeping the discourse tidy. And then came the comedy: a typo—“vontextual alternates”—became the accidental meme of the thread, as people tried to decode how the magic works with contextual alternates.

Verdict? A split screen: innovation points for a font doing what editors usually do, and side-eye from power users who want control. Whether it’s genius or gimmick, TeX just got a glow-up—and the community brought the drama.