[AUCTeX] preview-latex 0.9.1 released

[David Kastrup]

Release notes for version 0.9.1 of the preview-latex package:

preview-latex makes LaTeX a tightly integrated component of your
editing workflow by visualizing selected source chunks (such as single
formulas or graphics) directly as images in the source buffer.
You get to have your eye candy and edit it, too.

The employed style file `preview.sty' is independently useful for
extraction of selected text elements as images.

The package is released under the GNU Public License (GPL) and can be
downloaded from <URL:ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/auctex/> as a tarball
or as RPM files.  At the current point of time, at least GNU
Emacs-21.3 under the X window system or XEmacs-21 in version 21.4.10
or later, AUCTeX (11.51 or later required for PDF support), a working
LaTeX installation and GhostScript are required.  dvipng[1] (version
1.4 or later: teTeX-3.0 works, TeXlive2004 not), a very fast dvi
converter, can be used to speed up the conversion.  For Windows[2],
MacOS Carbon[3] or native GTK+ toolkit support[4], a developer
version[5] of GNU Emacs (to be released as 22.1) is definitely
required; for other platforms, use of it is advantageous.

The installation procedure has been further improved: more
configurations should now be detected automatically.  It is strongly
recommended that you remove any previous installation before
installing this version to avoid keeping conflicting or unnecessary
files.  In particular version 0.9 has been known to install into
strange (but working) places at times and will likely render later
installed versions inoperative.

The quality of multibyte and image support in the current
implementations and the responsiveness of the developers to problem
reports does not recommend the use of XEmacs at the current point of
time.

The encoding support of preview-latex has been refined: the run buffer
will now yield readable output again in most situations where it can
be reasonably expected to do so.

The installation no longer requires Makeinfo or Perl as long as you
don't touch source files: precompiled documentation is included in the
distribution by default and no longer available as a separate archive.

The `README' file provides adequate information for firing up
preinstalled distributions, and pointers how to provide feedback.  The
`INSTALL' file contains a special section with advice for package
providers.  There is also a file `INSTALL.windows' detailing
instructions for users of that operating system.

preview-latex has now been moved into the AUCTeX project.  As a
consequence, its web site has become
<URL:http://www.gnu.org/software/auctex/#preview-latex>, the project
page (with browsable CVS repository) is that of AUCTeX at
<URL:http://savannah.gnu.org/projects/auctex>.  Starting with release
11.80, preview-latex will come bundled with AUCTeX.

If you can spare the time, you can also comment on or rate this
project at <URL:http://freshmeat.net/projects/preview-latex>.

Paypal donations to the maintainer are possible directly or via
SourceForge.

Footnotes: 
[1]  dvipng is currently available via its current project page
<URL:http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/dvipng> and from CTAN.

[2]  You can get a precompiled version of CVS Emacs for Windows at
<URL:http://nqmacs.sourceforge.net>.

[3]  <URL:http://members.shaw.ca/akochoi-emacs/stories/faq.html>
contains build instructions.

[4]  For Debian, precompiled GTK+ Emacs packages can be found at
<URL:http://sadleder.de/debian/>, for Fedora at
<URL:http://people.redhat.com/petersen/emacs/>.

[5]  If making use of the precompiled variants is not an option for
you, instructions for checking out the CVS version straight from the
GNU's mouth can be found at
<URL:http://savannah.gnu.org/cvs/?group=emacs>

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum