The second Alpha version of the new TeXnicCenter 2.0 has been released today. It is not stable, very likely to crash and intended for testing only. It’s designed to work alongside TeXnicCenter Version 1, both can be used when installed in different directories.

Many issues of Alpha 1 have been fixed. For more information about improvements and known issues read the announcement of the TeXnicCenter Team.

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

The source code of EtherPad, a web-based word processor that allows people to work together in real-time, has been released by the developers. Now it’s possible to run EtherPad on other servers than just etherpad.com. Alternative servers like the swedish PiratePad have already been established.

This collaborative editor provides an update speed of twice a second making it very responsive. Though it’s a plain text editor it could be used to produce LaTeX code collaboratively. There are already semi-automatic solutions using perl and ruby. Together with an online compiler EtherPad could be a useful feature in LaTeX discussion forums helping to solve user’s problems and to develop solutions.

The maintenance release 1.6.5 of LyX has been published yesterday. It brings bug-fixes, new layouts and modules and some feature requests have been implemented. The LyX team recommends to upgrade to this version.

For more information and download visit:

• the LyX Homepage,
• the announcement containing a detailed list of changes,
• the download area.