[196] in Software_Announce
big newtex update
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Aaron M. Ucko)
Sun Oct 26 22:45:54 1997
To: software-announce@MIT.EDU
Cc: cfyi@MIT.EDU, sipb-office@MIT.EDU, bug-newtex@MIT.EDU, tex-hackers@MIT.EDU,
ajberger@MIT.EDU
From: amu@MIT.EDU (Aaron M. Ucko)
Date: 26 Oct 1997 22:43:54 -0500
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 <http://www.rhbnc.ac.uk/e-TeX/> 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 <http://www.tug.org/tds/>.
* 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 <amu@mit.edu> (finger amu@monk.mit.edu) [Stark raving sane]
