Karl Berry writes:
I have released version 4.7 of Texinfo, the GNU documentation format, with supporting programs. The NEWS is below.
You can get it by anonymous ftp from ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/texinfo/texinfo-4.7.tar.gz ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/texinfo/texinfo-4.7.tar.bz2 and its mirrors worldwide (see http://www.gnu.org/order/ftp.html). It will also be available through CTAN and its mirrors, for example, http://www.ctan.org/macros/texinfo.
The Texinfo home page is http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/.
Please email bugs or suggestions to bug-texinfo@gnu.org, general discussion to help-texinfo@gnu.org.
Peace, karl@gnu.org
4.7 (9 April 2004)
- Language: . new commands @float, @caption, @shortcaption, @listoffloats for initial implementation of floating material (figures, tables, etc). Ironically, they do not yet actually float anywhere. . new commands @docbook, @ifdocbook, @ifnotdocbook for conditional Docbook. . new commands @ordf{} and @ordm{} for Spanish feminine/masculine ordinals. . new commands @deftypecv[x] for class variables in typed OO languages. . new command @registeredsymbol for the r-in-a-circle symbol. . new command @headitem to make a heading row in @multitable. . new command @LaTeX{} for the LaTeX logo. . new command @comma{} to avoid comma-parsing problems. . @url is now a synonym for @uref; new command @indicateurl has the old meaning of just displaying a url as text. . @quotation now accepts an optional argument for labelling the text as a `Note', `Tip', etc. . @defun (et al.) heading lines can now be continued with a lone @. . @acronym accepts an optional argument for the meaning of the acronym.
- makeinfo: . New environment variable TEXINFO_OUTPUT_FORMAT determines the output format at runtime, if no options are specified. . New option --plaintext, equivalent to --no-headers with Info output. . All outputs:
. Info output:
- sections are numbered by default.
. HTML output:
- punctuation is inserted after @pxref and @ref, if needed to make cross-references valid.
- line numbers included in index menus, so Info readers can go to the exact line of an entry, not just a node. Also in plaintext output.
- ^@^H[index^@^H] cookie included in index menus, so Info readers can handle the ] etc. commands better.
. XML output: many new tags and structure to preserve more source features. . Docbook output:
- new algorithm for cross-references to other manuals, for maximum portability and stability.
- include node name in <title> with split output.
- @multicolumn fractions become percentages.
- entities used for bullets, quotes, dashes, and others.
- index entries are links to the exact locations.
<h4> and <h5> used for @sub and @subsubsections again.
- accented dotless i supported.
- upgraded DTD to Docbook XML 4.2, no longer using Docbook SGML.
- improved translation in general, for instance:
- line annotations and marked quotations.
- texi2dvi: . if available, use etex (pdfetex if --pdf) by default. . if the input file includes thumbpdf.sty (for LaTeX), then run thumbpdf. . more output if --debug.
- texinfo.tex: . @defun names are now printed in typewriter (instead of bold), and within the arguments, @var text is printed in slanted typewriter. . @tex code is executed inside a TeX group, so that any changes must be prefixed with global (or the equivalent) to be effective. (This change was actually made years ago, but never made it into the NEWS.)
- info: . new option --where (aka --location, -w) to report where an Info file would be found, instead of reading it. . by default, output ANSI terminal escape sequences as-is; new option --no-raw-escapes overrides this. . use the newly-generated index line numbers.
- Distribution: . new script gendocs.sh (not installed), for use by GNU maintainers in getting their manuals on the GNU web site. Documented in maintain.texi (http://www.gnu.org/prep/maintain_toc.html). . Most code uses ANSI C prototypes, to some extent. . New translation: nb. . automake 1.8.3, autoconf 2.59, gettext 0.14.1.
the ctan location is in fact macros/texinfo, so the ctan url karl quotes should in fact be http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/texinfo.
Robin Fairbairns
For the CTAN team