AUCTeX 11.88 released

[Mosè Giordano]

Release notes for AUCTeX 11.88 with preview-latex
=================================================

AUCTeX provides by far the most wide-spread and sophisticated
environment for editing LaTeX, TeX, ConTeXt and Texinfo documents with
Emacs or XEmacs.  Combined with packages like RefTeX, flyspell and
others it is pretty much without peer as a comprehensive authoring
solution for a large variety of operating system platforms and TeX
distributions.  It supports document-dependent completion and syntax
highlighting, easily accessible menus, jumping to error locations in
the source file, a number of editing shortcuts, intelligent
indentation and filling of text during entry, and WYSIWYG previews of
graphical elements like math formulas right in the Emacs source
buffer, by virtue of its preview-latex component.

One part of the preview-latex subsystem is the central `preview.sty'
file that is independently useful for a number of applications and is
available in unbundled form from CTAN.[1]

AUCTeX needs volunteers in particular for non-programming tasks:
documentation writing, tutorials, translations, reference material,
sleuth work, testing.


New features and fixed bugs in this release
-------------------------------------------

'TeX-PDF-mode' is now enabled by default.

Now 'TeX-previous-error' works with TeX commands if the new option
'TeX-parse-all-errors' is non-nil, which is the default.  When this
option is non-nil, an overview of errors and warnings reported by the
TeX compiler can be opened with 'M-x TeX-error-overview <RET>'.

Style file authors are encouraged to distinguish common from expert
macros and environments, and mark the latter using
'TeX-declare-expert-macros' and 'LaTeX-declare-expert-environments'.
Users can then restrict completion using
'TeX-complete-expert-commands'.

Management of LaTeX package options in the parser was improved.  You
might need to reparse your documents, especially if you loaded the
'babel' package with language options.

Now you can insert '$...$' or '\(...\)' by typing a single '$'.  To do
this, customize the new option 'TeX-electric-math'.
'TeX-math-close-double-dollar' was removed.

'C-c <RET> documentclass <RET>' completes with all available LaTeX
classes, if the 'TeX-arg-input-file-search' variable is non-nil.
Completion for class options of the standard LaTeX classes is provided
as well.

New user options 'LaTeX-default-author',
'LaTeX-fontspec-arg-font-search', 'LaTeX-fontspec-font-list-default',
'TeX-date-format', and 'TeX-insert-braces-alist'.  A new possible value
('show-all-optional-args') for 'TeX-insert-macro-default-style' was
added.  The default value of 'TeX-source-correlate-method' has been
changed.

'biblatex' support was greatly expanded.  If parsing is enabled, AUCTeX
looks at 'backend' option to decide whether to use Biber or BibTeX. The
'LaTeX-biblatex-use-Biber' variable was changed to be file local only
and is no more customizable.

With some LaTeX classes, the default environment suggested by
'LaTeX-environment' ('C-c C-e') when the current environment is
'document' was changed.  With 'beamer' class the default environment is
'frame', with 'letter' it is 'letter', with 'slides' it is 'slide'.

Brace pairing feature was enhanced in LaTeX documents.  Support for
'\bigl', '\Bigl', '\biggl' and '\Biggl', the same as the one for
'\left', was added to 'TeX-insert-macro'.  For example, 'C-c <RET> bigl
<RET> ( <RET>' inserts '\bigl(\bigr)'.

You can insert brace pair '()', '{}' and '[]' by typing a single left
brace if the new user option 'LaTeX-electric-left-right-brace' is
enabled.

Macros '\langle', '\lfloor' and '\lceil', which produce the left part
of the paired braces, are treated similarly as '(', '{' and '[' during
the course of 'TeX-insert-macro'.

Support for dozens of LaTeX packages was added.

Tabular-like environments (tabular, tabular*, tabularx, tabulary,
array, align, ...)  are indented in a nicer and more informative way
when the column values of a table line are written across multiple
lines in the tex file.

The suitable number of ampersands are inserted when you insert array,
tabular and tabular* environments with 'C-c C-e'.  Similar experience
is obtained if you terminate rows in these environments with 'C-c
<LFD>'.  It supplies line break macro '\\' and inserts the suitable
number of ampersands on the next line.  Similar supports are provided
for various amsmath environments.

Commands for narrowing to a group ('TeX-narrow-to-group') and to LaTeX
environments ('LaTeX-narrow-to-environment') were added.

Now arbitrary options can be passed to the TeX processor on a per file
basis using the 'TeX-command-extra-options' option.

Now 'C-c C-e document <RET>', in an empty document, prompts for
'\usepackage' macros in addition to '\documentclass'.

'TeX-add-style-hook' has now a third argument to tell AUCTeX for which
dialect (LaTeX, Texinfo or BibTeX) the style hook is registers.
Labelling style hook by dialect will avoid applying them not in the
right context.

There have been lots of bug fixes and feature additions.

Requirements
------------

It is required that you use at least GNU Emacs 21 or XEmacs 21.4.
XEmacs requires at least version 1.84 of the xemacs-base package
(released on 01/27/2004) or a sumo tarball dated 02/02/2004 or newer
for compiling AUCTeX: please use the XEmacs package system for
upgrading if necessary.

The preview-latex subsystem requires image support.  This is available
with GNU Emacs 21.3 under the X window system.  For Windows[2], Mac OS
X (Carbon, Cocoa)[3] or native GTK+ toolkit support, at least version
22.1 of GNU Emacs is required.  Emacs 22 and later is the recommended
platform for AUCTeX in general.  If you prefer XEmacs, it will work in
version 21.4.10 or later.

You'll also need a working LaTeX installation and Ghostscript.
dvipng[4] (version 1.4 or later), a very fast DVI converter, can be
used to speed up the conversion.

Availability
------------

AUCTeX can be downloaded in various formats from
<URL:ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/auctex/>.  At release time, we provide the
source tarball, a precompiled version for Emacs on Windows, and a
platform-independent XEmacs package file (which you have to install
yourself using XEmacs' own package system, after using it for removing
the previous version of AUCTeX).  The easiest way for using AUCTeX, of
course, is using versions of Emacs that already include AUCTeX or a
software package management system for your operating system which
provides you with the latest release.

The XEmacs package file can be discerned by `pkg' in its name.  It is
usually more recent than what gets distributed from XEmacs servers and
as part of the Sumo tarball.

A separate directory for each release contains some stuff from the
tarball, such as ChangeLog, printable manuals, and a reference sheet.
The download area is mirrored to the directory support/auctex on CTAN.
AUCTeX is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3.

You'll find more information at the web site of AUCTeX
<URL:http://www.gnu.org/software/auctex/>, including its mailing list
addresses.


Future development and additional information
---------------------------------------------

AUCTeX is proceeding as a GNU project with the long-term intent of
merging it into Emacs.  For that reason, all new contributors need to
assign copyright to their contributions to the FSF (the usual
procedure for Emacs contributors).  The same holds for past
contributors.  The principal authors and maintainers have already done
so, but it would require a diligent and diplomatic volunteer to find
and ask the rest.

Current project manager is David Kastrup.  Paypal contributions to
<URL:mailto:address@hidden> would be appreciated in order to
compensate for time, money and hardware required for presenting AUCTeX
at conferences.  Extensions may be commissioned: enquire on the
developer list (see above).  Other than that, volunteering for tasks
remains the most effective way of helping AUCTeX development.

The following people contributed to this release series (in
alphabetical order): Ivan Andrus, Ralf Angeli, Masayuki Ataka, Fabrice
Ben Hamouda, Thomas Baumann, Vincent Belaïche, Berend de Boer, Ken
Brown, Joshua Buhl, Patrice Dumas, Werner Fink, Miguel Frasson, Peter
S. Galbraith, Mosè Giordano, Patrick Gundlach, Jobst Hoffmann, Tassilo
Horn, Yvon Hevel, Mads Jensen, Arne Jørgensen, David Kastrup, Ikumi
Keita, Philip Kime, Oleh Krehel, Joost Kremers, Frank Küster, Jan-Åke
Larsson, Matthew Leach, Antoine Levitt, Leo Liu, Vladimir Lomov, Stefan
Monnier, Dan Nicolaescu, Piet van Oostrum, Nicolas Richard, Augusto
Ritter Stoffel, Florent Rougon, Davide G. M. Salvetti, Rüdiger
Sonderfeld, Holger Sparr, Mike Sperber, Reiner Steib, Christian
Schlauer, Shiro Takeda, Mark Trettin (Please accept our apologies if we
forgot somebody.)

Footnotes: 

[1]  <URL:ftp://ftp.dante.de/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/preview/>

[2]  You can get a precompiled version of Emacs for Windows at
<URL:ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/>.

[3]  See e.g. <URL:http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/EmacsForMacOS>
for a list of precompiled versions of Emacs for Mac OS X.

[4]  dvipng is available via its project page
<URL:http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/dvipng> and from CTAN.

--
Mosè Giordano, on behalf of the AUCTeX team