CTAN package update: the UK TeX FAQ

CTAN Announcements ctan-ann at dante.de
Fri Jun 30 15:46:27 CEST 2006


I am pleased to announce version 3.16 of the UK TeX FAQ; it has been
installed at the Cambridge node, and should be somewhere near you
really soon.

The FAQ is LaTeX-oriented, but has a fair amount aimed to help and
interest Plain TeX users.  Users of other macro packages may not find
it terribly helpful (but then, Context users always have
contextgarden...).

I append the changes file below.

Robin Fairbairns

For the CTAN team

Changes in version 3.16

These are changes from 3.15a, which incorporated a couple of
minor corrections made on the day 3.15 was uploaded

New answers:
  Label chngmargonfly: changing the document's margins "on the fly"
  Label doc-wiki: catalogue of known tex-related WIKIs
  Label fonts-pln: "sophisticated" font selection macros in Plain TeX
  Label gutter: the problem with two-sided document margins
  Label marginmanual: setting up the document's margins "by hand"
  Label marginpkgs: packages for setting up the document's margins
  Label matchbrak: matching "[]" in optional arguments, etc.
  Label newfont: why shouldn't I use \newfont in LaTeX?
  Label poster: summary of the inadequate state of support for posters
  Label repeatgrf: repeated graphics in documents
  Label whatbst: choosing a BibTeX style
  Label whatpdftex: "PDFTeX has entered the mainstream" (actually, it did some
                    time ago, but I've now "recognised" that in the FAQ)

Answers removed:
  Label pdftex: I think pdftex is no longer "research" -- see label whatpdftex

Revised answers:
  Label ant: correct home page reference
  Label changemargin: rehashed as intro and list of links to (new)
                      "instruction" answers marginpkgs, marginmanual
                      and chngmargonfly
  Label complist: mention multenum package
  Label cv: europecv has improved, and there's a new class moderncv
  Label dvipsgraphics: extend discussion of bitmap graphics in dvips
  Label drawing: correct URL for pstricks site
  Label findfiles: remove mention of the (long dead) quote site index,
                   add the catalogue bytopic.html
  Label fmtconv: troff-to-latex no longer available
  Label newfunction: mention \operatorname command
  Label labundef: mention labelcas package
  Label labelfig: mention iTe editor, correct URL on pstricks page
  Label man-tex: correct URL for Andy Roberts' page
  Label man-latex: add Chris Harrison's web manual
  Label rotating: mention rotfloat package
  Label seccntformat: correction of suggested code
  Label secthead: remove 2.09 font commands from "simple" example
  Label struttab: mention new cellspace package
  Label texsystems: mention w32tex (from japan) -- capable of being a "minimal"
                    system
  Label tutbitslatex: correct URL for the pTeX description, add link to Smith's
                      "LaTeX for logicians"
  Label usepictex: correct stuff about mathspic package
  Label verbwithin: make clear problems apply to verbatim environment, too
  Label xetex: simplify the answer (the details are all on the web
               site, anyway), and mention the new linux port

Presentation:
  LaTeX ``...'' quotes in the source used to be converted to the ascii
  double-quote character in the HTML; this is changed to use the HTML
  entities for "typographic" quotes (similarly for single quotes and
  apostrophes).

  A minor change to html generation has been made, inserting paragraph
  elements after block quotes: this makes CSS-controlled display more
  regular (a CSS sheet is used in the code generated for the new CGI
  engine -- see below).

  Building the FAQ now requires e-TeX (or rather [pdf-]e-LaTeX); this
  should not be a problem unless your TeX distribution is a bit aged.

Future releases:
  This release is wildly overdue (even making allowance for my
  extended illness).  If I can find the time to do so, I intend in
  future to release anything that's available, around the end of each
  month.  Full releases, with batches of new questions, may still be
  long delayed, but I hope not.

Coming up (still):
  I have a far more efficient CGI engine for serving answers to the web;
  those of a strong constitution may view the experimental testbed at:
    URL http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html-gamma
  It is missing a search engine, various links and topping and tailing
  of answers; it uses Cambridge University's "default" CSS sheet in a
  non-standard way; and, crucially it lacks **SUPPORT**.  I welcome
  suggestions for improving the way I do things, but I can't claim it
  will always work.

  Mechanisms whereby I can point to the CTAN catalogue from FAQ
  answers remains as a "background task"; I suggested several ways
  (last time) in which such links would be valuable.



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