New packages on CTAN in July:

• boolexpr - evaluation of boolean expressions in a purely expandable way
• germkorr - changes kerning for german quotation marks, for instance brings some letters like T nearer to german quotes
• fig4latex - simplifies management of figures in large projects by creating makefiles
• mathgifg - LaTeX support for Microsoft Georgia and ITC Franklin Gothic in text and math
• ltxnew - provides the \new, \renew and \provide prefixes for checking definition of control sequences, designed to work with e-TeX
• changelayout - an extension of the changepage package that can be used to change the layout of individual pages and their texts
• keycommand - an eTeX/LaTeX package that provides a natural way to define commands with optional keys, it’s based on the \kvsetkeys package
• biblatex-authoryear-icomp-tt - provides an author-year style with compact multiple-reference-citations and ibidem mechanism
• etextools - useful tools for e-TeX/LaTeX Users and package writers
• properties - loads properties (key, value) from a properties file
• kmrhyph - hyphenation patterns for the kurmanji language, T1 encoded
• ctex - a collection of macro packages and document classes for Chinese LaTeX typesetting
• zhspacing - a CJK typesetting package for document formats using XeTeX
• xeCJK - a LaTeX2e package for typesetting CJK documents in XeTeX
• CJKpunct - adjusts the location and kerning of CJK punctuation marks
• ERDC - provides a class for typesetting technical information reports of the Engineer Research and Development Center, US Army Corps of Engineers
• ESTCPMM - typesetting reports for Munitions Management Reports, US Environmental Security Technology Certification Program

New documentation on CTAN this month:

• Presentations with LaTeX - example files for the book from the Dante-Edition series,
• lshort-persian - Persian (Farsi) translation of “The not so short introduction to LaTeX2e”
• ConTeXt Top Ten Commands - an introductory document on ConTeXt frequently used commands
• Chinese Asymptote Manual - Chinese translation of the official Asymptote manual
• Asymptote By Example - a Chinese Asymptote tutorial
• Chinese Asymptote FAQ - Chinese translation of the official Asymptote FAQ
• ConTeXt Notes - a ConTeXt tutorial in Chinese covering ConTeXt installation, fonts, layout design, cross-reference, project structure, presentation design and more
• ctex-faq - LaTeX FAQ by the Chinese TeX Society

Updates on CTAN this month:

achemso, pst-3dplot, thailatex, tikz-timing, dvisvgm, pdfcomment, eplain, biblatex, zhmetrics, pst-solides3d, latex-veryshortguide, csquotes, erdc, memoir, biblatex-apa, ly1enc.def, natbib, FiXme, cell, pstool, etextools, oberdiek bundle, animate, zhspacing, bmeps, asymptote, ctex, pdfcrop, jpgfdraw, dozenal, ConTeXt Commands Top Ten, chitex, calctab, xepersian, bidi, cleveref, glossaries, datatool, softmaker-freefont, TotCount, VnTeX, expl3, mlist and biblatex-chicago-notes-df. For package-specific information visit the package folder on CTAN.

A test version of TeX Live 2009 has been released. The developer team writes: “We greatly appreciate any testing of TeX Live before the official release. The more people who do so, the better the final release will be. It is also a chance to influence the eventual result. Testers should try it not with the expectation that “everything should work perfectly” (it won’t), but rather “I’ll try this out and see if I can help improve it”.”

Visit http://tug.org/texlive/pretest.html for download and information concerning installation, testing and reporting.

This text is available in German. Dieser Text ist auch in Deutsch verfügbar.

I’ve read on the texhax mailing list today that Karl Berry has posted the schedule of talks for the TUG 2009 conference. There you can read about the program, workshops, talks and participants of this years annual meeting of the TeX Users Group on July 29-31, 2009 plus the workshop day on July 28.