trunk/doc/ltnews14.tex

   1 % \iffalse meta-comment
   2 %
   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
   5 % in this file.
   6 %
   7 % This file is part of the LaTeX base system.
   8 % -------------------------------------------
   9 %
  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.
  17 %
  18 % This file has the LPPL maintenance status "maintained".
  19 %
  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
  22 % information.
  23 %
  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.
  27 %
  28 % \fi
  29 % Filename: ltnews14.tex
  30 %
  31 % This is issue 14 of LaTeX News.
  32
  33 \documentclass
  34 %    [lw35fonts]     % uncomment this line to get Palatino
  35    {ltnews}[2001/07/12]
  36
  37 % \usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
  38
  39 \publicationmonth{June}
  40 \publicationyear{2001}
  41 \publicationissue{14}
  42
  43
  44 \begin{document}
  45
  46 \maketitle
  47
  48 \raisefirstsection
  49 \section{Future releases}
  50
  51 We are currently exploring how to best support the very large
  52 community of individuals, organisations and enterprises that depend on
  53 the robustness and availability of the current standard \LaTeX{}
  54 distribution.  The results of this may lead to some changes in the
  55 regular release schedule and the handling of bug reports during the
  56 next year.
  57
  58 \section{New release of \textsf{Babel} (required)}
  59
  60 Earlier this year a new release of \textsf{Babel} (3.7) became
  61 available. You can read about its new features in
  62 \begin{latexonly}
  63   \file{http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/}\\
  64   \hspace*{4em}\file{latex/required/babel/announce.txt}
  65 \end{latexonly}
  66 \begin{htmlonly}
  67   \url{http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/required/babel/announce.txt}
  68 \end{htmlonly}
  69
  70 One of the bugs that got fixed in this release deals with how labels
  71 are handled by \LaTeX{}.  Because this part of the kernel is modified
  72 by \textsf{babel}, the relevant changes need to be coordinated.
  73 Therefore to use \textsf{Babel} with this release of \LaTeX{} you will
  74 need to update your version of \textsf{babel} to at least 3.7.
  75
  76 \section{New input encoding \package{latin9}}
  77
  78 The package \package{inputenc} has, thanks to Karsten Tinnefeld, been
  79 extended to cover the \package{latin9} input encoding.  The
  80 ISO-Latin~9 encoding is a useful modern replacement for ISO-Latin~1
  81 that contains a few characters needed for French and Finnish. Of wider
  82 interest, it also contains the euro currency sign; this could be the
  83 killer argument for many 8-bit texts to use Latin-9 in the future.
  84
  85 According to a Linux manpage, ISO~Latin-9 supports Albanian, Basque,
  86 Breton, Catalan, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Finnish,
  87 French, Frisian, Galician, German, Greenlandic, Icelandic, Irish
  88 Gaelic, Italian, Latin, Luxemburgish, Norwegian, Portuguese,
  89 Rhaeto-Romanic, Scottish Gaelic, Spanish and Swedish.\\
  90 The characters added in \package{latin9} are (in \LaTeX{} notation):\\
  91 \begin{small}
  92 \verb| \texteuro  \v S  \v s  \v Z  \v z  \OE  \oe  \" Y |
  93 \end{small}\\
  94 They displace the following characters from \package{latin1}:\\
  95 \begin{small}
  96 \verb| \textcurrency  \textbrokenbar  \"{}   \'{}   \c{} |\\
  97 \verb| \textonequarter  \textonehalf  \textthreequarters |
  98 \end{small}
  99
 100
 101 \section{New tools}
 102
 103 The new package \package{trace} provides many commands to control
 104 \LaTeX{}'s tracing and debugging output, including the excellent new
 105 information available with \eTeX{} such as the extremely useful
 106 tracing of local assignments.  You will find it in the tools
 107 distribution.
 108
 109 It offers the command \verb|\traceon|, which is similar to
 110 \verb|\tracingall| but suppresses uninteresting stuff such as font
 111 loading by NFSS (which can go on for pages if you are unlucky).  It
 112 also offers \verb|\traceoff| to \ldots\ guess what!  Full details are
 113 in the documented source file, \file{trace.dtx}.
 114
 115 In the base \package{ifthen} package we have added
 116 the uppercase synonyms \verb|\NOT| \verb|\AND| and \verb|\OR|.
 117
 118 \section{New experimental code}
 119
 120 In \textit{\LaTeX{} News~12} we announced some ongoing work towards a
 121 `Designer Interface for \LaTeX' and we presented some early results
 122 thereof.  Since then, at Gutenberg\,2000 in Toulouse and TUG\,2000 in
 123 Oxford, we described a new output routine and an improved method of
 124 handling vertical mode material between paragraphs.  In combination
 125 these support higher quality \emph{automated}\footnote
 126                              {The stress here is on automated!}
 127 page-breaking and page make-up\latex{\\}
 128 for complex pages---the best yet achieved with \TeX{}!
 129
 130 More recently we have added material to handle the complex front
 131 matter requirements of journal articles; this was presented at
 132 Gutenberg\,2001 in Metz.
 133
 134 A paper describing the new output routine is
 135 \begin{latexonly}
 136   at\\
 137 \begin{small}
 138   \file{http://www.latex-project.org/papers/xo-pfloat.pdf}\\
 139 \end{small}
 140 \end{latexonly}
 141 \begin{htmlonly}
 142   at \url{http://www.latex-project.org/papers/xo-pfloat.pdf}.
 143 \end{htmlonly}
 144 All code examples and documentation are available
 145 \begin{latexonly}
 146   at\\
 147 \begin{small}
 148    \file{http://www.latex-project.org/code/experimental}
 149 \end{small}
 150 \end{latexonly}
 151 \begin{htmlonly}
 152   at \url{http://www.latex-project.org/code/experimental/}.
 153 \end{htmlonly}
 154
 155 This directory has been extended to contain the following.
 156 \begin{description}
 157  \item[galley] Prototype implementation of the interface\latex{\\}
 158    for manipulating vertical material in galleys.
 159  \item[xinitials] Prototype implementation of the interface\latex{\\}
 160    for paragraph initials (needs the \texttt{galley} package).
 161  \item[xtheorem] Contributed example using the \texttt{template}
 162    package to provide a designer interface for theorem environments.
 163  \item[xor] A prototype implementation of the new output routine
 164    as described in the \texttt{xo-pfloat.pdf} paper.
 165  \item[xfrontm] A prototype version of
 166    the new font matter interface.
 167 \end{description}
 168
 169 \end{document}