To: software-announce Cc: cfyi, sipb-office, bug-newtex, tex-hackers, ajberger Subject: big newtex update Mime-Version: 1.0 (generated by tm-edit 7.106) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII From: amu@mit.edu (Aaron M. Ucko) Date: 26 Oct 1997 22:43:54 -0500 Message-ID: Lines: 58 X-Mailer: Gnus v5.5/Emacs 20.2 --text follows this line-- As of sometime tonight (October 26, 1997), the newtex locker will be a new locker with new binaries and a slightly different setup. While this overhaul brings many improvements, it may cause problems for people whose dotfiles reference old paths, and for people who are using DECstations or RS/6000s. (This last is due entirely to laziness; we will build the software for those platforms if people want us to.) We intend to update the locker more frequently in the future. Because Athena includes older versions of much of the software in the newtex locker, one should put its binaries early in one's path with add -f newtex or the equivalent. Major new features: * Kpathsea 3.0: More flexible path searching. * e-TeX 3.14159-1.1: The sixth release of TeX 3, with support for some additional features (including the extra TeX--XeT primitives for bidirectional typesetting and a \middle command analogous to \left and \right) in extended or enhanced mode. We have built every format in both compatibility and extended mode; the extended versions' names all start "etex." For compatibility with the old newtex locker, we have provided wrapper scripts to start e-TeX in the enhanced mode supporting the TeX--XeT primitives. See for more information about e-TeX. * Metafont 2.718: The fourth release of Metafont 2. * MetaPost 0.632: A Metafont-like picture drawing command. * dvipsk 5.66a: A program to convert the DVI files TeX produces into PostScript suitable for printing. * xdvik 20a: An X-based DVI file previewer, now with online help. * Nearly full compliance with version 0.9994 of the TeX Directory Structure . * LaTeX 2e 1997/06/01: The latest release of the new standard version of LaTeX. For compatibility, the "latex" command still invokes LaTeX 2.09; however, we may make it invoke LaTeX 2e (which should work with most LaTeX 2.09 documents) instead in the near future. "latex209" and "latex2e" will continue to invoke the respective versions. * New versions of the standard LaTeX 2e packages (amsfonts, babel, graphics, mfnfss, psnfss, and tools). * MusicTeX 5.20: macros for typesetting music. * Copious documentation in /mit/newtex/share/texmf/doc. * Probably a bunch of other stuff I forgot to mention. -- Aaron M. Ucko (finger amu@monk.mit.edu) [Stark raving sane]