[Info-AUCTeX] AUCTeX 12.3 released

[Mosè Giordano]

Release notes for AUCTeX 12.3 with preview-latex
================================================

AUCTeX provides by far the most wide-spread and sophisticated
environment for editing LaTeX, TeX, ConTeXt and Texinfo documents with
Emacs.  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
-------------------------------------------

Support for 'PSTricks' is now PDF-oriented.  AUCTeX no longer turns
off PDF mode for 'PSTricks' documents even without 'pst-pdf'.  It
now sets up 'TeX-PDF-from-DVI' option so that PDF output is
generated when 'TeX-PDF-mode' is enabled (default).  Users who want
DVI output should disable PDF mode explicitly by file local
variable, or customize 'TeX-PDF-mode' to 'nil'.

The function 'font-latex-update-font-lock' has been obsoleted in
order to fix 'bug#37945'.  That function was used by several style
files in order to refresh fontification after adding new symbols or
verbatim constructs.  It is better to call 'font-lock-flush' in the
former case and 'font-latex-set-syntactic-keywords' in the latter
case.  The function 'font-latex-update-font-lock' still exists as a
no-op which only shows a warning explaining how to update font-lock
as mentioned above.

Math expression highlighting was improved.  Highlighting for
documents with a lot of inline math expressions '$...$' won't get
scrambled now ('bug#33139').

There is small incompatibility due to this fix.  When odd number of
dollar signs are in a comment, the subsequent lines are highlighted
as math until another '$' appears.  You can insert a commented
dollar sign ('%$') at the next suitable end of line as a
workaround.

In addition, it is no longer recommended to customize
'font-latex-math-environments'.  Use 'texmathp-tex-commands'
instead.

AUCTeX tracks changes in LaTeX2e 2020-02-02 release.  AUCTeX
supports the improvements to LaTeX font selection mechanism (NFSS).
New macros like '\textsw' or '\textulc' are added to font insertion
keyboard commands.  See the section for inserting font specifiers
for details.  Further, the entries in the menu LaTeX, Insert Font
are reorganized and adjusted accordingly.

Macros previously provided by 'textcomp.sty' are now part of LaTeX
kernel.  AUCTeX tracks this change as well and support for the new
macro '\legacyoldstylenums' is added.

Insertion of environments in LaTeX documents (i.e.  'C-c C-e') was
improved.  The former code had a few bugs, which sometimes resulted
in either spurious empty line or spurious comment prefix, or both,
especially when the region is active.  Those bugs are now fixed.

More bugs fixed, other minor features implemented.

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

It is required that you use at least GNU Emacs 24.

The preview-latex subsystem requires image support.

You'll also need a working LaTeX installation and Ghostscript.
dvipng[2] (version 1.4 or later), a very fast DVI converter, can be
used to speed up the conversion.

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

The easiest way for getting AUCTeX is installing it with GNU ELPA, see
<URL:https://elpa.gnu.org/packages/auctex.html> for more information.
Other download options are available at
<URL:https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/auctex/>.  At release time, we provide the
source tarball.  You can also use versions of Emacs that already
include AUCTeX or a software package management system for your
operating system which provides you with the latest release.

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:https://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 AUCTeX managers are Arash Esbati, Mosè Giordano, and Tassilo
Horn.  Everybody is welcome to contribute to the project by reporting
bugs and suggesting improvements, but the most effective way of
helping AUCTeX development remains volunteering for tasks.

The following people contributed to this release series (in
alphabetical order): Ivan Andrus, Ralf Angeli, Masayuki Ataka,
Mohammad Hossein Bateni, Fabrice Ben Hamouda, Thomas Baumann, Vincent
Belaïche, Berend de Boer, Alex Branham, Uwe Brauer, Ken Brown, Joshua
Buhl, Jean-François Burnol, Patrice Dumas, Arash Esbati, Werner Fink,
Miguel Frasson, Peter S. Galbraith, Mosè Giordano, Patrick Gundlach,
Jobst Hoffmann, Tassilo Horn, Yvon Hevel, Orlando Iovino, 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, Pieter Pareit, Nicolas Richard, Augusto Ritter Stoffel,
Florent Rougon, Santiago Saavedra, 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:https://www.ctan.org/pkg/preview>

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

--
Mosè Giordano, on behalf of the AUCTeX team