LATEX News
Issue 1, June 1994 (LATEX release 1994-06-01)

Welcome to LATEX News
An issue of LATEX News will accompany every future
release of LATEX. It will tell you about important
events, such as major bug fixes, newly available
packages, or any other LATEX news.

LATEX 2ε —the new LATEX release

Unfortunately, this will not always work, because some
LATEX 2.09 packages will only work in LATEX 2εcompatibility mode. You should find out if there is a
LATEX 2ε version of the package available.
LATEX 2ε native mode also gives access to the newfeatures of LATEX 2ε , described in LATEX 2ε for authors.

New packages

The most important news is the release of LAT X 2Eε , thenew version of the LAT X software. This version hasEbetter support for fonts, graphics and colour, and will
be actively maintained by the LATEX Project team.
Upgrades will be issued every six months, in June andDecember.

LATEX 2ε has much better support for graphics, colour,fonts, and multi-lingual typesetting. The following
software should be available from the distributor whobrought you LATEX 2ε :babel, for typesetting in many languages.
color, for colour support.

Why a new LAT X?

graphics, for including images.

Over the years many extensions have been developed forLATEX. This is, of course, a sure sign of its continuing
popularity but it has had one unfortunate result:incompatible LATEX formats came into use at different
sites. Thus, to process documents from various places, asite maintainer was forced to keep LATEX (with andwithout NFSS), SliTEX, AMS-LATEX, and so on. Inaddition, when looking at a source file it was not alwaysclear for which format the document was written.
To put an end to this unsatisfactory situation a newrelease of LATEX was produced. It brings all suchextensions back under a single format and thus prevents
the proliferation of mutually incompatible dialects ofLATEX 2.09. The new release was available for several
months as a test version, and the final release of 1 June
officially replaces the old version.

mfnfss, for using bitmap fonts.

Processing documents with LATEX 2εLATEX 2ε for authors, describes the new features ofLATEX documents, in the file usrguide.tex.

EDocuments written for LATEX 2.09 will still be read by
LATEX 2ε . Any such document is run in LATEX 2.09
compatibility mode.
Unfortunately, compatibility mode comes with aprice: it can run up to 50% slower than LATEX 2.09 did.
If you want to run your document in the faster nativemode, you should try replacing the line:\documentstyle[options,packages]{class}with:\documentclass[options]{class}\usepackage{latexsym,packages}

psnfss, for using Type 1 fonts.
tools, other packages by the LATEX Project team.
The packages come with full documentation, and arealso described in LATEX: A Document Processing Systemor The LATEX Companion.

Further information
More information about LATEX 2ε is to be found in:
LATEX: A Document Preparation System, Leslie
Lamport, Addison Wesley, 2nd ed, 1994.
The LATEX Companion, Goossens, Mittelbach andSamarin, Addison Wesley, 1994.
The LATEX distribution comes with documentation on
the new features of LATEX:LATEX 2ε for class and package writers, describes thenew features of LATEX classes and packages, in thefile clsguide.tex.
LATEX 2ε font selection, describes the new features of
LATEX fonts for class and package writers, in the filefntguide.tex.
For more information on TEX and LATEX, get in touchwith your local TEX Users Group, or the international
TEX Users Group, P. O. Box 869, Santa Barbara,
CA 93102-0869, USA, Fax: +1 805 963 8358,
EMail: tug@tug.org.

LATEX News, and the LATEX software, are brought to you by the LATEX Project Team; Copyright 1994, all rights reserved.