[AUCTeX] AUCTeX 12.1 released

[Mosè Giordano]

Release notes for AUCTeX 12.1 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
-------------------------------------------

AUCTeX now requires GNU Emacs 24 or higher.  Support for XEmacs has
been dropped.

Besides the change in the supported version of Emacs, there has
been no functional change in this release, which is equivalent to
version 11.92.

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:ftp://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: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]  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