Release notes for AUCTeX 11.90 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
-------------------------------------------

In addition to the completion performed by 'TeX-complete-symbol',
AUCTeX now also supports the new Emacs standard completion-at-point
facility (see the Emacs command 'completion-at-point').  This also
means that modern completion UIs like company-mode work out of the
box in TeX and LaTeX buffers.

Completion is now aware of being inside a math environment and then
completes math macros.

AUCTeX is able to display several levels of super- and subscripts,
each one raised above and a bit smaller than its basis.  For this
feature, have a look at the customize options
'font-latex-fontify-script' (especially the new values 'multi-level'
and 'invisible') and 'font-latex-fontify-script-max-level'.  Also, the
script characters '^' and '_' are also fontified with a special face
named 'font-latex-script-char-face'.

Parsing of format specification in various tabular environments has
been improved.  The function 'LaTeX-insert-item' ('C-c <LFD>') inserts
suitable number of ampersands for '*{num}{cols}' constructs.  Style
files for LaTeX packages 'tabularx', 'tabulary', 'longtable',
'dcolumn' and 'siunitx' are adapted to take advantage of this
improvement.

AUCTeX has a new Ispell dictionary 'tex-ispell.el' for macros and
environments which will be skipped during spell checking.  The
activiation of this feature is controlled by a new customize option
'TeX-ispell-extend-skip-list', which is set to 't' and activated by
default.

AUCTeX has a new customize option 'TeX-raise-frame-function' that is
currently only used by Evince and Atril inverse search to raise the
Emacs frame.

When inserting a new float, AUCTeX will now prompt for a short-caption
if the length of the caption provided is greater than a certain size.
This size is controlled via a new user option
'LaTeX-short-caption-prompt-length'.

Parsing of the compilation log has been reworked.  You should
encounter fewer mistaken files while navigating through errors and
warnings.

Two new user options, 'TeX-ignore-warnings' and
'TeX-suppress-ignored-warnings', allow ignoring certain warnings
after compilation of the document.

A new option, 'TeX-PDF-from-DVI', controls if and how to produce a PDF
file by converting a DVI file.  This supersedes
'TeX-PDF-via-dvips-ps2pdf' which is still recognized but marked as
obsolete and may be removed in future releases.

Support for a number of external viewers has been added:
   * Atril viewer.  Forward and inverse search requires version
     1.9.1 or later to work.

   * dviout viewer on Windows.  Note that this setup works when
     'TeX-source-correlate-method' is set to use 'source-specials'
     for DVI, e.g.:
          (setq TeX-source-correlate-method
                '((dvi . source-specials)
                  (pdf . synctex)))
     which is the default.

   * SumatraPDF viewer on Windows.

   * Zathura viewer.  Forward and inverse search requires a recent
     version of the program to work (3.4 or later).

A new function, 'TeX-documentation-texdoc', for reading
documentation with 'texdoc' has been added.  'TeX-doc' is still
available but now 'C-c ?' runs 'TeX-documentation-texdoc'.

AUCTeX has a new custom option
'LaTeX-reftex-cite-format-auto-activate' which controls the automatic
activation of citation formats provided by RefTeX when a style file is
loaded and RefTeX is enabled.  Currently, 'biblatex.el', 'harvard.el',
'jurabib.el' and 'natbib.el' use this feature.  If you have customized
'reftex-cite-format' and want to use your settings, you should set
this variable to 'nil'.

AUCTeX now has limited support for the TikZ package.  For the moment,
this includes some basic support for prompting the user of arguments
to the '\draw' macro.

The style 'graphicx.el' went through a bigger overhaul.  The optional
argument of command '\includegraphics' now supports key-val query;
keys can independently be chosen anytime by pressing the <,> key.  As
a side effect, the variable 'LaTeX-includegraphics-options-alist' is
now no-op and is removed from 'tex-style.el'.  You can safely remove
any customization of it from your init file.  The mandatory argument
of '\includegraphics' knows about image file extensions supported by
the used engine and offers them for inclusion.

Support for other LaTeX packages was improved, and style files for
several new packages were added.

Many bugs were crushed along the way.

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
------------

The easiest way for getting AUCTeX, for users running Emacs 24.1 or
higher, 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:ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/auctex/>.  At release time, we provide the
source tarball, 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).  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.

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 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, Fabrice
Ben Hamouda, Thomas Baumann, Vincent Belaïche, Berend de Boer, Uwe
Brauer, Ken Brown, Joshua Buhl, 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, 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: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

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