latex2e-20150101/doc/ltnews05.tex

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  29 % Filename: ltnews05.tex
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  31 % This is issue 5 of LaTeX News.
  32
  33 \documentclass
  34 %    [lw35fonts]
  35    {ltnews}
  36
  37 % \usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
  38
  39 \publicationmonth{June}
  40 \publicationyear{1996}
  41 \publicationissue{5}
  42
  43 \begin{document}
  44
  45 \maketitle
  46
  47 \section{Welcome to \LaTeXNews~5}
  48 This issue of \emph{\LaTeXNews} accompanies the fifth release of the
  49 new standard \LaTeX{}, \LaTeXe.
  50
  51 \section{Extra possibilities for section headings}
  52 Most \LaTeX\ sectioning commands are defined using
  53 \verb|\@startsection|.
  54 For example, the \textsf{article} class defines:
  55 \begin{small}
  56 \begin{verbatim}
  57 \newcommand\section{\@startsection
  58  {section}{1}{0pt}{-3.5ex plus-1ex minus-.2ex}%
  59  {2.3ex plus.2ex}{\normalfont\Large\bfseries}}
  60 \end{verbatim}
  61 \end{small}
  62 The last argument specifies the style in which the section heading is
  63 to be typeset.
  64
  65 The new feature added at this release is that at the \emph{end} of
  66 this argument you may specify a command that \emph{takes an argument}.
  67 This command will be applied to the section number and heading.
  68 For example, one could use the \verb|\MakeUppercase| command to
  69 produce uppercase headings. A package or class file could contain:
  70 \begin{small}
  71 \begin{verbatim}
  72 \renewcommand\section{\@startsection
  73  {section}{1}{0pt}{-3.5ex plus-1ex minus-.2ex}%
  74  {2.3ex plus.2ex}{\normalfont\Large\MakeUppercase}}
  75 \end{verbatim}
  76 \end{small}
  77 to produce section headings using uppercase medium weight text, rather
  78 than the bold text used by \textsf{article}. Note that, like the font
  79 choice, the uppercasing applies only to the actual heading (including
  80 any automatically generated section number), not to the text as it may
  81 appear in the running head or table of contents.
  82
  83 \section{The `openany' option in the `book' class}
  84 The \textsf{openany} option allows chapter and similar openings to
  85 occur on left hand pages. Previously this option only affected
  86 \verb|\chapter| and \verb|\backmatter|. It now also affects
  87 \verb|\part|, \verb|\frontmatter| and \verb|\mainmatter|.
  88
  89 \section{More font (output) encodings}
  90 The font encoding name \texttt{T3} has been allocated to the encoding
  91 used in the new 256-character \textsc{IPA} fonts (for the phonetic
  92 alphabet) produced by Rei Fukui. His package, \textsf{tipa},
  93 gives access to these fonts and should soon be available.  (The
  94 encoding named \texttt{OT3} is the 128-character encoding used in the
  95 \textsc{IPA} fonts produced by Washington State University.)
  96
  97
  98
  99 \section{More input encodings supported}
 100 The \textsf{inputenc} package now supports the IBM codepage~852 used
 101 in Eastern Europe, with the option~\texttt{[cp852]} contributed by
 102 Petr~Sojka.
 103
 104 Also, the \textsf{inputenc} package now activates most `control codes'
 105 with \textsc{ascii} values below 32.
 106 Currently none of the encodings in the standard distribution makes use
 107 of these positions.
 108
 109 \section{Fixes and improvements}
 110 The \LaTeX\ kernel has only had minor changes, apart from
 111 \verb|\@startsection| mentioned above.
 112 However, some small fixes have been incorporated removing the
 113 following problems:
 114
 115 \begin{itemize}
 116 \item
 117   In tabular and array, previous versions of \LaTeX\ `lost' the
 118   inter-column space from an `\texttt{l}'-column, when that column
 119   was completely empty.
 120
 121 \item
 122   Previously, the use of the \verb|\nofiles| command could change
 123   the \emph{vertical spacing} in a document.\\ A side effect of fixing
 124   this is that when \verb|\nofiles| is used, \verb|\label| puts a
 125   blank line in the log file.
 126
 127 \item
 128   \LaTeX~often loads fonts `on demand'. Previously, this could
 129   happen inside the argument of an accent command and this would
 130   cause the accent to appear in the wrong place.
 131
 132 \end{itemize}
 133
 134 \section{Changes to the `tools' packages}
 135
 136 \begin{itemize}
 137 \item
 138   The \textsf{longtable} package now uses a modified algorithm,
 139   contributed by David Kastrup, to align the `chunks' of a table.
 140   It is now unnecessary to edit the document to add
 141   \verb|\setlongtables| before the final run of \LaTeX.
 142   In certain cases of overlapping \verb|\multicolumn| entries, the new
 143   algorithm will produce better column widths than the old (at the
 144   price of extra passes through \LaTeX).
 145
 146 \item
 147   The \textsf{dcolumn} package now has the extra possibility of
 148   specifying the number of digits both \emph{before} and after the
 149   `decimal point'. This makes it easy to centre the column of numbers
 150   under a wide heading.
 151 \end{itemize}
 152
 153 \section{New copy of the \LaTeX\ bug database}
 154 \verb|http://www.tex.ac.uk/ctan/latex/bugs.html| will soon have links
 155 to a copy of the searchable \LaTeX\ bugs database at Mainz (Germany)
 156 as well as the original copy at Sussex (England).
 157
 158 \end{document}