Hi,
The 2021 texlive code is currently being frozen. This means that Mojca
will check-in the current context release right before tl gets deep frozen.
The MKII code (mkii and mpii files) hasn't changed so it should still
work well with pdftex and xetex although I admit that I haven't checked
to what extend updates to those engines have side effects for context,
but I assume none. Let me know if there are problems.
The MKIV code (mkiv, mkvi, mpiv, lua files) has changed but not much,
mostly as a side effect of the code split and move to LMTX where the
focus is on now. There have been recent changes in the metafun code, but
new functionality is LMTX only, simply because we use an extended
library (more features). Of course there have been some bug fixes to
MKIV and if you think more (bugs) should be fixed let us know.
The yearly texlive release is also the 'official' yearly current release
but of course after that there will be updates when needed. In these
updates we don't distinguish between betas and currents: we dropped that
some time ago because it was only confusing.
Last/this year much of LMTX (mkxl, mpxl, lmt files) already got split
and I expect that this year all the lua and mp files also will be
independent so that at some point we have a more or less frozen MKIV
that uses luatex (which doesn't change fundamentally apart from fixes so
we don't need to adapt code to it i.e. MKIV should keep working just
like MKII does with pdftex; updates to for instance fonts and languages
will be applied).
I get the impression that most users already moved to LMTX which helped
getting it in the state it is now (thanks for all the testing). Although
MKII/MKIV serves a reference for functionality, new stuff got and gets
added to LMTX. I could backport some but it probably makes no sense
(some is probably easy). There is of course untested code like the
overload protection mechasnisms but I have that enabled on my machine
(users can do that too) so I can notice side effects.
The new engine (luametatex) doesn't change much. Recent changes are
mostly cosmetic and I don't expect many more fundamental additions, but
who knows ... (not all in there is yet used extensively) and maybe
context users have interesting demands that trigger extra stuff (read:
challenges me).
So apart from new trickery at the tex macro end, we also reach a more
stable state in LMTX. Soon I'll pick up some todo's. Some users want
parallel stuff (keeps coming up), I also want to see how we can do more
metafun - let me know what is missing as I'm currently in metafun mode -
and go over some older lua code that started as experiment but hasn't
been checked recently. I also want to cleanup the export code a bit but
it's kind of boring to do and maybe we should ditch some pdf backend
functionilty that adobe dropped from its viewers. And there are always
manuals to complete / update ... Anyway, the current LMTX release is
also a kind of yearly snapshot.
So, if there is some last minute stuff that needs to be done to context
MKII and MKIV before the tl code freeze, let us know.
Hans
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Hans Hagen | PRAGMA ADE
Ridderstraat 27 | 8061 GH Hasselt | The Netherlands
tel: 038 477 53 69 | www.pragma-ade.nl | www.pragma-pod.nl
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