% \iffalse meta-comment % % Copyright 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 % The LaTeX3 Project and any individual authors listed elsewhere % in this file. % % This file is part of the LaTeX2e system. % ---------------------------------------- % % It may be distributed under the terms of the LaTeX Project Public % License, as described in lppl.txt in the base LaTeX distribution. % Either version 1.0 or, at your option, any later version. % % \fi % Filename: ltnews02.tex % This is issue 2 of LaTeX News. \documentclass % [lw35fonts] {ltnews} \publicationmonth{December} \publicationyear{1994} \publicationissue{2} \begin{document} \maketitle \section{Welcome to \LaTeXNews~2} An issue of \emph{\LaTeXNews} will accompany every future release of \LaTeX. It will tell you about important events, such as major bug fixes, newly available packages, or any other \LaTeX{} news. \section{December 1994 release of \LaTeX} December 1994 sees the second release of \LaTeXe. We are on schedule to deliver a release of \LaTeX{} every six months, in December and June. This release has seen quite a lot of activity, which is not too surprising as it's only been a year since the first test release of \LaTeXe. We don't expect so much activity in the next six months. Many of the changes are minor improvements and bug-fixes---see \emph{\LaTeXe{} for authors} (\verb|usrguide.tex|), \emph{\LaTeXe{} font selection} (\verb|fntguide.tex|) and our change log (\verb|changes.txt|) for more details. However, there are two important new packages available for \LaTeX: \texttt{inputenc} and AMS-\LaTeX. \section{Accented input} One of the problems with writing non-English documents in \LaTeX{} is the accent commands. Reading documents containing text like \verb|na\"\i ve| is frustrating, especially if your keyboard allows you to type \texttt{na\"\i ve}. In the past, \LaTeX{} has not supported input containing accented characters such as \texttt{\"\i}, because Windows, Macintosh and Unix all have different ways of dealing with accented input, called \emph{input encodings}. However, the \verb|inputenc| package allows you to specify which input encoding your document is written with, for example to use the ISO Latin-1 encoding, you type: \begin{verbatim} \usepackage[latin1]{inputenc} \end{verbatim} At the moment, \verb|inputenc| supports the \verb|ascii| and \verb|latin1| input encodings, but more will be added with future releases. The \verb|inputenc| package is currently a test release. The user interface for the full release will be upwardly compatible with the test version. \section{AMS-\LaTeX{}} AMS-\LaTeX{} is a set of miscellaneous extensions for \LaTeX{} distributed by the American Mathematical Society. They provide superior information structure and superior printed output for mathematical documents. There are far too many features of AMS-\LaTeX{} to list here. AMS-\LaTeX{} is described in the accompanying documentation, and in \emph{The \LaTeX{} Companion}. Version 1.2beta of AMS-\LaTeX{} was released for testing by intrepid users in October 1994. The full release of AMS-\LaTeX{}~1.2 is expected in early January 1995. It will be divided into two bundles: \begin{itemize} \item the \verb|amsfonts| packages, which give access to hundreds of new mathematical symbols, and new math fonts such as blackboard bold and fraktur. \item the \verb|amsmath| packages, which provide finer control over mathematical typesetting, such as multi-line subscripts, enhanced theorem and proof environments, and improved displayed equations, \end{itemize} For compatibility with older documents, an \verb|amstex| package will be provided. \section{\LaTeX{} on the internet} \LaTeX{} has its own home page on the World Wide Web, with the URL: \begin{verbatim} http://www.tex.ac.uk/CTAN/latex/ \end{verbatim} This page describes \LaTeX{} and the \LaTeX3 project, and contains pointers to other \LaTeX{} resources, such as the user guides, the \TeX{} Frequently Asked Questions, and the \LaTeX{} bugs database. The electronic home of anything \TeX-related is the Comprehensive \TeX{} Archive Network (CTAN). This is a network of cooperating ftp sites, with over a gigabyte of \TeX{} material: \begin{verbatim} ftp://ftp.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/ ftp://ftp.shsu.edu/tex-archive/ ftp://ftp.dante.de/tex-archive/ \end{verbatim} For more information, see the \LaTeX{} home page. \section{Further information} For more information on \TeX{} and \LaTeX, get in touch with your local \TeX{} Users Group, or the international \TeX{} Users Group, P.~O.~Box~869, Santa~Barbara, CA~93102-0869, USA, Fax:~+1~805~963~8358, EMail:~tug@tug.org. \end{document}