1 % \iffalse meta-comment
3 % Copyright 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
4 % The LaTeX3 Project and any individual authors listed elsewhere
7 % This file is part of the LaTeX base system.
8 % -------------------------------------------
10 % It may be distributed and/or modified under the
11 % conditions of the LaTeX Project Public License, either version 1.3c
12 % of this license or (at your option) any later version.
13 % The latest version of this license is in
14 % http://www.latex-project.org/lppl.txt
15 % and version 1.3c or later is part of all distributions of LaTeX
16 % version 2005/12/01 or later.
18 % This file has the LPPL maintenance status "maintained".
20 % The list of all files belonging to the LaTeX base distribution is
21 % given in the file `manifest.txt'. See also `legal.txt' for additional
24 % The list of derived (unpacked) files belonging to the distribution
25 % and covered by LPPL is defined by the unpacking scripts (with
26 % extension .ins) which are part of the distribution.
29 % Filename: ltnews15.tex
31 % This is issue 15 of LaTeX News.
34 % [lw35fonts] % uncomment this line to get Palatino
37 % \usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
39 \publicationmonth{December
}
40 \publicationyear{2003}
49 \section{Anniversary release
}
51 Yes, it's now
10~years since the first release in this series and, for
52 Knuthists, this release also contains
\textit{Issue
16}\,!
54 Meanwhile this
\textit{Issue~
15} describes the major new features in
55 the current release whilst
\textit{Issue~
16} looks
\newline
56 a little way into the future of
\LaTeX{}.
59 \section{LPPL -- new version
}
61 Most importantly, there is now a new version,
1.3, of the
\LaTeX{}
62 Project Public Licence. Many of you will
\newline
63 be thrilled to know that, following the exchange of over
1600 e-mail
64 messages dissecting various aspects of its philosophy such as `how
65 many angels can appear in the name of a file before it becomes
66 non-free', this version
\newline
67 is now officially a DFSG (Debian Free Software Guidelines) approved license.
68 The discussions start at
69 \url{http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/
2002/debian-legal-
200207/threads.html
}
70 with high traffic throughout August to October~
2002 and further
71 heated discussions starting in April~
2003 and concluding
73 \url{http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/
2003/debian-legal-
200306/msg00206.html
}.
75 The important features of the new version are useful clarifications in
76 the wording, and revised procedures
\newline
77 for making a change to the Current Maintainer of a package. Special
78 thanks to all those people from
\newline Debian Legal who worked
79 constructively with us
\newline
80 on this onerous task, especially but not exclusively
\newline
81 Jeff Licquia and Branden Robinson.
84 \section{Small updates to varioref
}
86 The English has been corrected in
\verb|
\reftextbefore|
87 (an incompatible change). There are other extensions
88 such as
\verb|
\labelformat|,
\verb|
\Ref|,
\verb|
\Vref| and
\verb|
\vpagerefnum|.
89 Some Dutch text has also been changed and two
\newline
90 new options added:
\package{slovak
} and
\package{slovene
}.
93 \section{New and more robust commands
}
95 Many of the math mode commands for compound symbols have been made
96 robust and a new robust command has been added:
\verb|
\nobreakdashes|.
97 This last is a low-level command, borrowed from the
\package{amsmath
}
98 package, for use only before hyphens or dashes. It prevents the line
99 break that is normally allowed
\newline
100 after the following sequence of dashes.
103 \section{Fixing font sizes
}
105 The new
\package{fix-cm
} package, by Walter Schmidt, changes the CM font
106 definition (
\texttt{.fd
}) files so that similar design sizes are used
107 in both the
\texttt{OT1
} and
\texttt{T1} encodings.
110 \section{Font encodings
}
112 A number of options have been added to the
\package{textcomp
} package,
113 enabling only available glyphs to be used.
114 Also, the `NFSS font families' are now divided into five different groups
115 according to the subset of glyphs each provides from the full
116 collection of symbols in the TS1 encoding.
117 Given sufficient information about a font family
118 \package{textcomp
} will use this in order to limit the
\newline
119 typesetting to those glyphs that are available.
121 Use of this mechanism has also enhanced
\verb|
\oldstylenums|
122 to use the current font if possible.
125 \section{Displaying font tables
}
127 With the
\package{nfssfont
} package you can now
128 specify the font to display by giving its `NFSS classification',
129 rather than needing to know its external font file's name.
130 It is also now possible to generate large collections of font
131 tables in batch mode by providing a suitable input file.
134 \section{New input encodings
}
136 The
\package{inputenc} package has been extended as follows:
137 \package{macce
} input encoding
138 (Apple Central European),
139 thanks to Radek Tryc and Marcin Wolinski;
\package{cp1257
}\newline
140 for Baltic languages;
\package{latin10
},
141 thanks to Ionel Ciob\^
{i
}c
\u{a
}.
\newline
142 The euro symbol has by
143 now been added to several encodings:
144 \package{ansinew
},
\package{cp1250
}
145 and
\package{cp1252
} (which also
\newline
146 has another addition), whilst
\package{cp858
}
147 adds it to
\package{cp850
}.
150 \section{Unicode input
}
152 Partial, experimental support for text files that use the Unicode
153 encoding form UTF-
8 is now provided by the option
\package{utf8
} for
154 the
\package{inputenc} package.
156 The only Unicode text file characters supported by the current version
157 are those based on the most common inputs for glyphs from the small
159 of standard
\LaTeX{} Latin encodings.
162 \section{And finally
\ldots\ pict2e
}
164 The old, non-functional version of this package has been removed
165 as there is now a fully working version from Hubert G\"a
{\ss}lein
166 and Rolf Niepraschk. It is described
167 in
\textit{The
\LaTeX{} Manual
}.