sesameseeds

Like the coffee-stain packages, but for people who read papers over a simit, the Turkish sesame-crusted bread ring. Each page gets a random but reproducible scatter of oven-roasted sesame seeds and crumbs of crust, as if an academic ate a simit over the printout. A baked simit is dry (its pekmez caramelised in the oven), so it sheds debris but leaves no stain.

Version 1.1, 2026-11-03.

Usage

\usepackage[mess=medium]{sesameseeds}   % none | light | medium | heavy | catastrophic

The automatic mess appears on every page without a second run. More examples:

\usepackage[heavy, randomseed=42, black=0.1, firstpage=false]{sesameseeds}

\sesamesetup{mess=catastrophic}               % applies to pages shipped from now on
\nosesame                                     % this page was read with a napkin
\sesameoff ... \sesameon                      % pause and resume the mess

% Placed by hand, in coordinates from the bottom-left corner of the page.
% These use `remember picture`, so compile twice.
\sesamesprinkle[count=25, spread=1.5cm]{14cm}{6cm}
\simitring[radius=6cm]{10.5cm}{15cm}          % ring of seeds and crumbs where it was put down
\sesameseed[angle=30, roast=0.9]{3cm}{3cm}

For the camera-ready version, \usepackage[off]{sesameseeds} turns everything off, including the debris placed by hand.

The full documentation, with all options, is sesameseeds-demo.pdf (source: sesameseeds-demo.tex).

Requirements and installation

LaTeX 2020-10-01 or newer, TikZ and pgfopts. Tested with pdfLaTeX, XeLaTeX and LuaLaTeX.

If your TeX distribution does not provide the package yet, put sesameseeds.sty next to your document or into TEXMFHOME/tex/latex/sesameseeds/.

Files

• sesameseeds.sty: the package
• sesameseeds-demo.tex, sesameseeds-demo.pdf: documentation and demo
• README.md: this file

Authors and contact

M. Fatih Toy and Tunçer Baykaş. Maintainer: M. Fatih Toy. Home page and contact: https://biocil.github.io/fun/sesameseeds/

License

Copyright (C) 2026 M. Fatih Toy and Tunçer Baykaş.

This material is subject to the LaTeX Project Public License 1.3c or, at your option, any later version (https://www.latex-project.org/lppl.txt). The work has the LPPL maintenance status "maintained"; the Current Maintainer is M. Fatih Toy.

Afiyet olsun.