TeX Live 2023 - bugs and updates
Most of TeX Live is a redistribution of
packages and programs from elsewhere, primarily CTAN. So, the place to send bug reports varies:
- If you have problems with a TeX document, e.g., a package is
behaving differently, report it to the package maintainer. As a rule,
package-specific fixes are not installed directly in TL; instead, new
versions of packages should be uploaded to CTAN.
- If you have questions about using TeX, or need help with TeX, please
use the general help resources.
- To report a bug in TeX Live installation or infrastructure, email
the public mailing list
tex-live@tug.org (public archives).
- For security-related reports, please use the tlsecurity@tug.org mailing
list (private archives).
Common requests:
- If you need to use alternate binaries, our recommended approach is
the custom binary support in the TL
installer. Numerous additional binary sets are available through
links on that page. Compiling from source is also an
option.
- TL does not provide modules for scripting languages, or interpreters
themselves (except for texlua; and, only on Windows, a minimal Perl).
Thus it is up to users to install any needed dependencies of third-party
scripts. More info.
Known issues in TeX Live 2023
The four LuaTeX binaries (luatex luahbtex luajitex
luajithbtex) were rebuilt in early May, 2023; the fixed version is
1.17.0. All installations should upgrade. Current TL has binaries for
the new version on all supported platforms. Updated x86_64-linux
binaries are available for all TL releases since 2017 in the historic archive (subdirectory
systems/texlive/YYYY/patches/); 32-bit Windows binaries are
also available, built from the TL23 sources (though TL23 itself does not
include any 32-bit Windows binaries). More
info.
The change that's most likely to be noticeable is that the
socket library is now disabled by default; a new command line option
--socket enables it, as well as --shell-escape (not
--shell-restricted). In addition, the mime library is now always
available, and new functions os.socketsleep and
os.socketgettime are also always available. Finally, some
obscure ways to work around various security features were
fixed.
Notable changes
As always, there were pervasive updates to packages and programs
(highlights of changes).
We can't list them all, but here are some of the principal user-visible
changes:
- Windows
- As announced previously, TeX Live now contains 64-bit Windows
binaries instead of 32-bit. The new directory name is
bin/windows (it did not seem right to put 64-bit binaries into a
directory named with “32”). We know this will cause extra
work for Windows users, but there seemed no better alternative. See the
separate TeX Live Windows page for more.
- ConTeXt
- At the request of the ConTeXt maintainers, TeX Live now includes ConTeXt LMTX (known by
several names), based on the new LuaMetaTeX engine by Hans Hagen. The
previous pdfTeX-based version is no longer included, and there are only
three executables: luametatex (the binary), context
and mtxrun (both symlinks to luametatex). (Preprint of forthcoming TUGboat
article about this.)
Binaries are provided for most platforms, but not as many as before.
LuaMetaTeX is not built as part of TL, since it uses an entirely
different build system (cmake instead of automake); so, anyone who wants
it on a platform not provided needs to build it from the LuaMetaTeX
source (snapshot included in TL in the source/ tree).
- Cross-engine extensions
- In engines except for original TeX and e-TeX:
- \special followed by a new keyword
“shipout” delays expansion of the argument tokens
until \shipout time, as with a non-\immediate\write.
- euptex
(full ChangeLog)
- “Raw” (u)ptex no longer built; (u)ptex now runs in
e(u)ptex's compatibility mode. Same for pTeX tools, listed below.
- New primitives: \tojis, \ptextracingfonts,
\ptexfontname.
- For \font, new syntax for JIS/UCS is supported.
- luatex (full LuaTeX news)
- new primitive \variablefam to allow math characters to keep
their class while still letting the family adapt.
- improved r2l annotation areas
- cross-engine “late \special” described above.
- metapost (full MetaPost news)
- Bug fixes: svg->dx and svg->dy are now
double, for better precision; mp_begin_iteration
updated; memory leak in mplib fixed.
- pdftex (full pdfTeX news)
- new primitive \pdfomitinfodict to omit /Info
dictionary completely.
- new primitive \pdfomitprocset to control omitting
/ProcSet array: /ProcSet is included if this
parameter is negative, or if this parameter is zero and pdftex is
generating PDF 1.x output.
- with \pdfinterwordspaceon, if the current font's encoding
has a /space character at slot 32, it is used; otherwise,
the /space from the (new) default font pdftexspace
is used. That default font can be overridden with the new primitive
\pdfspacefont. This same new procedure is used for
\pdffakespace.
- ptex et al.
(full pTeX news)
- As mentioned above, ptex now runs eptex in
compatibility mode instead of being built separately.
- pTeX tools (pbibtex, pdvitype, ppltotf, ptftopl) merged into
corresponding upTeX versions, running in compatibility mode.
- xetex (full XeTeX news)
- bug fix for \topskip and \splittopskip
computation when \XeTeXupwardsmode is active;
the cross-engine “late \special” described above.
- bibtexu (full bibtexu news)
- This BibTeX variant is mostly upward-compatible with
bibtex, with much better
(Unicode-based) multilingual support. It's been in TL for some years.
- This year, more features to support CJK languages have been added,
some extended from the Japanese (u)pbibtex and other programs.
- dvipdfmx (full dvipdfmx news)
- new option --pdfm-str-utf8 to make pdfmark and/or bookmark.
- kpathsea (full Kpathsea news)
- Support guessing input file encodings for Unix-ish platforms, as on
Windows; enabled for (e)p(la)tex, pbibtex, mendex.
- tlmgr (full tlmgr news)
- default to text interface on macOS.
- install core packages first, retry other packages once.
- simplistic checks for enough disk space.
- MacTeX
- MacTeX and its binary folder universal-darwin
require macOS 10.14 or higher (Mojave, Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey,
Ventura). The x86_64-darwinlegacy binary folder, available only
with the Unix install-tl, supports 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and
later.
- The GUI package in MacTeX now contains hintview, a macOS
viewer for HINT documents (created by the hitex and
hilatex engines for mobile devices; see the HiTeX web page
for more). The GUI package no longer installs a folder of documents,
replacing them with a short READ ME for new users and a
page about hintview.
- The Extras folder of additional TeX sofware on the DVD has
been replaced with a document containing links to download sites.
- Platforms
-
- As mentioned above, the new windows binary directory
contains 64-bit Windows binaries, and:
- the bin/win32 binary directory is gone, since we cannot
feasibly support 32-bit and 64-bit Windows simultaneously.
- The i386-cygwin binary directory is gone, since Cygwin no
longer supports i386.
Bug archives for the
previous release and earlier years remain
online (under systems/texlive; both the initial release each
year, and the frozen state at the end of the cycle in
tlnet-final).
If you discover other changes that should be noted, please send them in.
$Date: 2023/05/20 22:46:50 $;
TeX Live;
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