$Id: NEWS,v 1.170 2008/04/20 13:30:00 karl Exp $
This NEWS file records noteworthy changes, very tersely.
See the manual for detailed information.
Copyright (C) 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000,
2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Copying and distribution of this file, with or without modification,
are permitted in any medium without royalty provided the copyright
notice and this notice are preserved.
*** IMPORTANT NEWS FOR ALL AUTHORS OF TEXINFO MANUALS ***
As of version 4.2, Texinfo has a new command @copying to define the
copyright and copying permissions for a manual. If you haven't already,
please switch to using it in your next release, because the historical
method of doing copyright permissions using @ifinfo failed to output
copyright information in the HTML (or XML) formats. The manual has
detailed explanations and examples. For convenience, here's a url to
one of the relevant sections:
http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/manual/texinfo/html_node/Document-Permissions.html
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4.12 (20 April 2008)
* Language:
. new commands @clicksequence, @click, and @clickstyle for documenting
GUI sequences, and @arrow for the default glyph used.
. new commands @geq{} and @leq{} for the normal >= and <= relations.
* install-info:
. lzma compression supported.
. Much work towards compatibility with Debian's independent
implementation. Changes in behavior:
- new entries are formatted to start at column 34 by default.
- existing entries are replaced by default.
- new sections are alphabetized among existing sections.
- if an entry being removed is the last one in a section, the
section is also removed.
. Also many new options:
--section REGEX TITLE.
--no-indent: disable formatting of new entries.
--menuentry, --name: specify left-hand side of an entry.
--dry-run: alias for --test.
--regex REGEX: renamed from --section regex, adds to all sections
matching REGEX by default.
--add-once: add only to first specified or matching section.
--align COL: start description at column COL.
--calign COL: start continuation lines in description at COL.
--max-width COL: wrap the description at COL.
. New section in the Texinfo manual describing all this.
* Info:
Our goal with these changes to the default interface is to make Info
documents more easily and quickly readable, especially by non-experts.
. the PageUp and PageDown keys move through the whole document by
default, instead of just the current node.
. the h command shows the basic help, and H starts the Info tutorial.
. the newly-bound x command deletes the current window, e.g., within help.
. the scroll-step variable is set to 1 by default, for smooth scrolling.
. the cursor-movement-scrolls-p variable is set to 1 by default, so
link searches look through the whole document.
. regular expression searches are supported, and are the default for
both regular and incremental searches.
. the new R command toggles between regexp and literal-string searches.
. the new variable scroll-last-node controls scrolling at the end of
the last node; by default, it now simply reports there are no more
nodes. To restore the old behavior, set scroll-last-node=Scroll.
. the precise line number specified in index entries is used if available.
. --usage=info shows usage for standalone Info.
. lzma compression supported.
* Distribution:
. language support for no removed/renamed to nb, per Norwegian translators.
. new translation: es.
. bug fixes in make check (and elsewhere).
. gettext 0.17, automake 1.10.1, autoconf 2.62.
4.11 (9 September 2007)
* Language:
. @documentlanguage now supports an optional country code
specification after the language code, a la gettext.
. new command @allowcodebreaks controls breaks at _ and - within @code.
. new command @frenchspacing controls spacing after sentences.
. new command @fonttextsize allows changing body text font size to 10pt.
. new command @textdegree{} produces the normal degrees symbol.
. new command @thischapternum can be used in TeX headers/footers.
. new commands for quotes: @quotedblleft @quotedblright
@quoteleft @quoteright @quotedblbase @quotesinglbase
@guillemetleft @guillemetright @guilsinglleft @guilsinglright.
. new option @set txicodequoteundirected produces an undirected quote
in code and example output, instead of the regular right quote.
. new option @set txicodequotebacktick produces a grave accent in
code and example output, instead of the regular left quote.
* makeinfo:
. The @documentlanguage locale is used to translate various document strings.
. --enable-encoding is now the default, meaning Info and plain text
output use 8-bit characters given a supported @documentencoding.
. new option --css-ref=URL for creating a stylesheet in HTML output.
. new option --transliterate-file-names to use a reduction-to-ASCII
algorithm for split HTML file names, useful for non-Latin-based languages.
. @enddots{} outputs three dots instead of four, for consistency with
texinfo.tex.
. the Local Variables coding: setting written by --enable-encoding now
comes at the very end, after the tags table, so that Emacs can find
it in more cases.
. @allow-recursion (never documented) is deprecated and produces a warning.
. @quote-args (never documented) is now the default behavior.
. centering and such take account of character widths.
. the --reference-limit option is now a no-op.
. improvements to XML and Docbook output and the DTD.
* texinfo.tex:
. @thissection can now be used in custom headings, and @thischapter
works reliably even without @set chapternewpage. Custom headings
have additional flexibility as well.
* texi2dvi:
. pdftexi2dvi is a new wrapper to `texi2dvi --pdf', equal to texi2pdf,
for the sake of AUC-TeX which prepends `pdf' to the compilation
command when requested to produce PDF.
* info:
. look for info files in the current directory first, by default.
. when calling man, use -a if no explicit section is found.
. avoid showing the top(1) man page for nonexistent info files.
* install-info:
. new options --section-regex, --remove-exactly, --debug, --test.
* Distribution:
. autoconf 2.60, automake 1.10, gettext 0.16.1.
. gettext support now [external].
. new translations: hu (Hungarian), rw (Kinyarwandan), vi (Vietnamese).
. most common sources imported from gnulib.
4.10 (omitted)
4.9 (29 June 2007)
* GPLv3.
* texi2dvi:
. new mode --build=tidy which supports compilation in a separate
directory, where intermediate files are preserved.
. new option --build-dir, to specify where the tidy build will take
place, either locally or globally. This allows avoiding the clutter
while preserving auxiliary files.
. new support for AUC-TeX: texi2dvi (weakly) supports arguments a la
TeX such as `\nonstopmode\input{file.tex}'.
. new options --ps and --dvipdf, useful especially for pstricks documents.
. new option --src-specials, passed to TeX.
* texinfo.tex:
. Latin1, Latin2, Latin9, and UTF-8 are supported -- only as well as
the Computer Modern fonts can manage, which means primarily English
and western European languages, to a limited extent.
. png and jpg images supported in pdf output.
. new Russian, Serbian, and Ukrainian translations for texinfo.tex:
txi-ru.tex, txi-sr.tex, txi-uk.tex.
. section names with \ characters work properly in pdf outlines.
. have .toc files use @ as the escape character, instead of \.
4.8 (31 December 2004)
* Language:
. new command @euro for the Euro currency symbol, and
@documentencoding has some support for ISO-8859-15.
. new command @abbr for general abbreviations.
. new command @slanted to typeset text in a slanted font,
and @sansserif to typeset in a sans serif font.
* makeinfo:
. An empty first argument to cross-reference commands, such as @xref,
causes an error. This change was made in 4.1, but not mentioned in NEWS.
. HTML output:
- constructs are added for the old-style
conversion of node names to HTML names, so that external references
to them can continue to work.
- "g_t" prefixed to targets for node names beginning with a
nonletter, for XHTML compatibility.
. Docbook output: recognize more image formats.
* texi2dvi:
. new option --recode, to call recode for input character translation.
* Distribution:
. new convenience script texi2pdf, equivalent to texi2dvi --pdf (from tetex).
. some cross-compiling support in configure && make.
. new configure option --disable-install-warnings, for TeX.
distributions which do have the files installed.
. automake 1.9.4.
4.7 (9 April 2004)
* Language:
. new commands @float, @caption, @shortcaption, @listoffloats for
initial implementation of floating material (figures, tables, etc).
Ironically, they do not yet actually float anywhere.
. new commands @docbook, @ifdocbook, @ifnotdocbook for conditional Docbook.
. new commands @ordf{} and @ordm{} for Spanish feminine/masculine ordinals.
. new commands @deftypecv[x] for class variables in typed OO languages.
. new command @registeredsymbol for the r-in-a-circle symbol.
. new command @headitem to make a heading row in @multitable.
. new command @LaTeX{} for the LaTeX logo.
. new command @comma{} to avoid comma-parsing problems.
. @url is now a synonym for @uref; new command @indicateurl has the
old meaning of just displaying a url as text.
. @quotation now accepts an optional argument for labelling the text
as a `Note', `Tip', etc.
. @defun (et al.) heading lines can now be continued with a lone @.
. @acronym accepts an optional argument for the meaning of the acronym.
* makeinfo:
. New environment variable TEXINFO_OUTPUT_FORMAT determines the output
format at runtime, if no options are specified.
. New option --plaintext, equivalent to --no-headers with Info output.
. All outputs:
- sections are numbered by default.
. Info output:
- punctuation is inserted after @pxref and @ref, if needed to make
cross-references valid.
- line numbers included in index menus, so Info readers can go to
the exact line of an entry, not just a node. Also in plaintext output.
- ^@^H[index^@^H] cookie included in index menus, so Info readers
can handle the ] etc. commands better.
. HTML output:
- new algorithm for cross-references to other manuals, for maximum
portability and stability.
- include node name in with split output.
- @multicolumn fractions become percentages.
- entities used for bullets, quotes, dashes, and others.
- index entries are links to the exact locations.
-