Well, after some time of silence, we now have a major update. TeX Live
is frozen now and time has come to get things released...

The following parts are the major points of my todo list. I think that
some of them won't make it into 3.0 and will come later.

    - update TETEXDOC (more release notes etc.)
    - doc/index.php etc.
    - update teTeX-FAQ (changes location of map / enc files)
    - update ncurses
    - dvipng-1.2
    - add "texconfig paper" for setting a4 or letter for all supported
      applications
    - texconfig rewrite (initialization, place to store config data etc.)
    - add afm2pl

My plan is still to get 3.0 out this year. There will be a "release
candidate" before the final version.

In this beta, lots of things have changed again. Large packages have been
added to the texmf tree (such as beamer) and important things have changed
in the src area (Peter has fixed an important bug in etex / pdfetex).
updmap has been improved, too. I have even started to update TETEXDOC...

Files (to appear soon):
  ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/systems/unix/teTeX-beta/tetex-src-beta-2.99.0.20041023.tar.gz
  ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/systems/unix/teTeX-beta/tetex-texmf-beta-2.99.0.20041023.tar.gz
  ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/systems/unix/teTeX-beta/tetex-texmfsrc-beta-2.99.0.20041023.tar.gz
or
  ftp://ftp.dante.de/tex-archive/systems/unix/teTeX-beta/tetex-src-beta-2.99.0.20041023.tar.gz
  ftp://ftp.dante.de/tex-archive/systems/unix/teTeX-beta/tetex-texmf-beta-2.99.0.20041023.tar.gz
  ftp://ftp.dante.de/tex-archive/systems/unix/teTeX-beta/tetex-texmfsrc-beta-2.99.0.20041023.tar.gz

Changes in the src area:
        * started to update TETEXDOC (but not yet finished)
	* dvips bugfix (debian bug #277499 about mis-parsing of font
	  map files)
	* t1lib.ac: use LIBS not LDFLAGS
	* added TEXINPUTS.utf8mex to texmf.in
	* update texdoctk (v.0.6.0)
	* xdvik-22.84.4 (fixes a few bugs)
	* add a few missing manpages (contributed by Frank Kuester /
	  Claire Connelly)
        * set locale according to LC_CTYPE in texk/makeindexk/genind.c
          for correct tolower() behaviour
	* sync with TeX Live, lots of significant changes:
	  - pdfTeX 1.20a
	  - eTeX version 2.2 (hopefully final)
	  - Aleph 3.141592-1.15-2.1-rc4
	* dvips version is now 5.94b (no code change)
	* dvitomp.ch: a more complete implementation of the color stack.
	* tex.ch: Revise the file:line:error code to produce the correct
	  filename in the presence of \scantokens (an e-TeX extension)
	* different format of banner strings (web2c now comes last)
	* updates in documentation (e.g. web2c.texi and manpages)
	* mktexfmt.8 -> fmtutil.8 (fixed broken link to fmtutil.1)
	* add lamed (latex based on aleph), change lambda (latex based
	  on omega) in fmtutil.in
	* update texinfo.tex
	* sync with TeX Live; mostly changefile rearrangements
	* rm dvipsk/tex/dvipsmac.tex dvipsk/tex/dvips.tex
	* call updmap on "make install" (if updmap.cfg file is installed)
	* pdftex 1.20a-rc7.2

Changes in the texmf area:
	* footbib added back (now LPPL)
	* amslatex update; more docs now pdf instead of dvi
	* replace doc/latex/latex2e-html by chunced html version of
	  tex-refs (see http://www.miwie.org/tex-refs/)
	* update acronym, beamer, eepic, exam, chngpage.sty, koma-script
	  threeparttable.sty, pict2e, showlabels, Catalogue, ps4pdf, leftidx
	* update context to version 2004.10.19, additional bugfix for
	  core-job.tex from Hans
	* update ltnews.cls (better using \pdfoutput now)
	* updated doc/pdftex with files from TeX Live; pdfTeX-FAQ removed
	  (too many obsolete parts in it)
	* update listings, psnfss
	* update pstricks-add
	* update minitoc
	* update fancyhdr
	* update microtype, textcase
	* add files for utf8mex
	* letterspacing.tex (from Phil Taylor) removed for license reasons
	* removed tex/lambda/base/ltpatch.ltx
	* update doc/index.{php,html}
	* we now have the context manual: cont-eni.pdf (not exactly sure
	  when it was added)
	* update pstricks
	* update package microtype
	* package xkeyval added
	* add package microtype (LaTeX interface to micro-typographic
	  extensions of pdfTeX)
	* update psnfss to version 9.2 and added FPL fonts
	* update eplain
	* update context to version 2004.8.18
	* added slashed.sty by Carlisle
	* update package listings (to version 1.3)
	* added iso-8859-7.def
	* added package filecontents
        * update texinfo.tex
	* rm tex/plain/dvips/dvipsmac.tex
	* update pstricks
	* update pict2e, dkhyphen
	* get rid of symlinks in texmf tree:
	  - remove updmap generated files from this tree
	  - renamed doc/newhelpindex.html to doc/index.html
	* just for reference: bibtopic and multibib have been added
	  sometime ago...
	* add m-bib (bibtex support for context)
	* add beamer, pgf
	* add enumitem, algorithms (now GNU LPPL)
	* update bezos (added esindex / tensind)
	* add pdfcrop (to scripts + doc)
	* new location for enc-k.tex enc-p.tex enc-w.tex
	* update caption
	* mv doc/generic/enctex/unimap{py,diff} to source/generic/enctex
	* update vmargin, uk-tex-faq, Catalogue
	* fonts/afm/bitstrea/charter replaced from CTAN

Happy testing + have fun!

Thomas