latex2e-20150101/doc/ltnews04.tex

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  29 % Filename: ltnews04.tex
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  31 % This is issue 4 of LaTeX News.
  32
  33 \documentclass
  34 %   [lw35fonts]
  35    {ltnews}
  36
  37
  38 \publicationmonth{December}
  39 \publicationyear{1995}
  40 \publicationissue{4}
  41
  42 \begin{document}
  43
  44 \maketitle
  45
  46 \section{Welcome to \LaTeXNews~4}
  47
  48 An issue of \emph{\LaTeXNews} will accompany every future release of
  49 \LaTeX.  It will tell you about important events, such as major bug
  50 fixes, newly available packages, or any other \LaTeX{} news.
  51 This issue accompanies the fourth release of \LaTeXe.
  52
  53
  54 \section{\LaTeX\ getting smaller}
  55
  56 The last release in June started a trend of \LaTeX\ becoming
  57 smaller, we are pleased to announce that this has continued with this
  58 release. In particular the experimental `autoload' version described in
  59 \texttt{autoload.txt} is much smaller as more parts of \LaTeX\ are
  60 autoloaded.
  61
  62 \section{New `concurrent' docstrip}
  63
  64 The time taken to `unpack' this release from the documented sources
  65 should be much reduced (roughly half the time, depending on
  66 installation conditions). This is due to an improved version of the
  67 docstrip program that has been contributed by Marcin Woli\'nski.
  68 This can write up to 16 files at once. The
  69 previous version could only write one file at a time which meant that
  70 it was very slow when producing many small files from the same source
  71 file as the source needed to be re-read for each file written.
  72
  73 \section{New T1 encoded fonts}
  74
  75 This year J\"org Knappen has completed a new release of the `Cork'
  76 (T1) encoded Computer Modern fonts: the dc fonts release 1.2.
  77
  78 This release of the dc fonts fixes many bugs (including the missing
  79 \verb|?`| (?`) and \verb|!`| (!`) ligatures) and improves the fonts in
  80 many other ways. It is strongly recommended that you upgrade as soon as
  81 possible if currently you are using the old dc fonts, release 1.1 or
  82 earlier. The new fonts are available from the CTAN archives, in
  83 \texttt{tex-archive/fonts/dc}.
  84
  85 The names of the font files are \emph{different}. This does not affect
  86 \LaTeX\ documents but \emph{does} affect the installation procedure as
  87 it assumes that you have the \emph{new} fonts, and will write suitable
  88 `fd' files for those fonts. If you have not yet upgraded your dc fonts
  89 then, after unpacking the distribution, you \emph{must}
  90 \verb|latex olddc.ins| to produce `fd' files for the old dc fonts.
  91 This must be done \emph{before} the format is made. Running the test
  92 document at \texttt{ltxcheck.tex} the end of the installation will
  93 inform you if the wrong set of `fd' files has been installed.
  94
  95 Note that this change does not affect the standard `OT1' Computer
  96 Modern fonts that \LaTeX\ uses by default.
  97
  98 \section{More robust commands}
  99
 100 The commands \verb|\cite| and \verb|\sqrt| are now robust.
 101
 102 Although most commands with optional arguments are fragile, as
 103 documented, such commands defined using the second optional argument
 104 of \verb|\newcommand| and its derivatives are now \emph{robust}.
 105
 106 \section{New Interface to building `extension' classes}
 107
 108 The mechanism provided by \verb|\DeclareOption|, \verb|\ProcessOptions|
 109 and \verb|\LoadClass| has proved to be a powerful and expressive means
 110 of defining one class in terms of another `base' class. However there
 111 have been some requests to simplify the declaration of the common case
 112 where you want the `base' class to be called with \emph{all} the
 113 options that were specified to the extension class.  This is now
 114 provided by the new command \verb|\LoadClassWithOptions|. A similar
 115 command \verb|\RequirePackageWithOptions| is provided for package use.
 116 More details of this feature are provided in \texttt{clsguide.tex} and
 117 \texttt{ltclass.dtx}.
 118
 119 \section{More Input Encodings}
 120
 121 The experimental \texttt{inputenc} package allows a more natural style
 122 of input of accented and other characters.
 123
 124 Three new input encodings are now supported.
 125 \begin{itemize}
 126 \item \texttt{ansinew} the Windows ansi encoding,
 127                        as used in Microsoft Windows 3.x.
 128 \item \texttt{cp437de} a variant of \texttt{cp437}, which uses \ss\
 129   rather than $\beta$  in the appropriate slot.
 130 \item \texttt{next} the encoding used on Next computers.
 131 \end{itemize}
 132
 133 \section{Further information}
 134
 135 For more information on \TeX{} and \LaTeX, get in touch with your local
 136 \TeX{} Users Group, or the international \TeX{} Users Group,
 137 1850 Union Street, \#1637, San Francisco, CA~94123, USA,
 138 Fax:~+1~415~982~8559,
 139 EMail:~tug@tug.org.
 140 The \LaTeX{} home page is \verb|http://www.tex.ac.uk/ctan/latex/|
 141 and contains links to other WWW resources for \LaTeX.
 142
 143 \end{document}