Release notes for AUCTeX 13.3 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
-------------------------------------------

AUCTeX now requires GNU Emacs 26.1 or higher.

LaTeX abbrevs are now available in docTeX mode buffers.

AUCTeX temporarily rebinds the variable ‘gc-cons-percentage’ to a
higher value during parsing which speeds up the process
significantly.  The memory pressure should still be acceptable,
even on older machines.

Macros provided by the ‘xparse’ package are part of LaTeX kernel
since October 2020.  AUCTeX tracks this change and the content of
‘xparse.el’ is moved into ‘latex.el’ and ‘font-latex.el’
respectively.

The variable ‘preview-scale-function’ is now allowed as a
file-local variable where the assigned value can only be between
0.1 and 10.

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

It is required that you use at least GNU Emacs 27.1.

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, Andrea Greselin,
Patrick Gundlach, Abdul-Lateef Haji-Ali, Jobst Hoffmann, Tassilo Horn,
Yvon Hevel, Orlando Iovino, Mads Jensen, Arne Jørgensen, Philip
Kaludercic, David Kastrup, Ikumi Keita, Philip Kime, Oleh Krehel,
Joost Kremers, Frank Küster, Jan-Åke Larsson, Matthew Leach, Brian
Leung, Antoine Levitt, Leo Liu, Vladimir Lomov, Stefan Monnier, Paul
Nelson, 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, Tony
Zorman (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.
