Today Karl Berry announced on the TeX Live mailing list, that in about one week (May 10) TeX Live 2011 and tlnet will be frozen, and the building of the pretest version of TeX Live 2012 will start shortly after that.

So the schedule for the release of TeX 2012 is, as it can be read on the TeX Live homepage:

• May 10: TeX Live 2011 and tlnet frozen
• About 2 weeks: CTAN updates continue, pretesting starts
• May 24: Also CTAN updates stop, updates only on request
• May 31: Complete freeze, some time for testing and documentation
• June 14: Final images for the TeX Collection DVD
• In August: DVDs will be delivered to TUG members.

This is the plan, changes are still possible as it depends on the time of the developers and contributors.

TeX Live 2011 is now available online. It is a comprehensive TeX system working on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and other Unix systems. It includes LaTeX and all the major TeX-related programs, macro packages, and fonts that are free software and supports many languages. TeX Live has been developed since 1996 supported by several TeX user groups.

There are some changes in the new version:

• biber is now included, a program for bibliography processing.
• The Mac OS X binaries now work only on Leopard or later; Panther and Tiger are no longer supported.
• MetaPost no longer creates or uses .mem files. Needed files are read on every run.
• updmap runs much faster now.

Also MacTeX 2011 has been published online.

For more information and download visit

• the Homepage of TeX Live
• the list of changes
• the TeX Live download page
• Donating to TUG Activities
• Contributing to TeX Live as user, author or developer.

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

Today Karl Berry announced that a pretest version of TeX Live 2011 is now available. It can be downloaded from several repositories. The documentation has not been fully updated yet. The TeX Live Team would like it if you send them test reports and suggestions.

Some changes in 2011:

• The Mac OS X binaries now work only on Leopard or later; Panther and Tiger are no longer supported.
• MetaPost no longer creates or uses .mem files. Needed files are read on every run.
• updmap runs much faster now.

Fore more information and download visit the TeX Live testing page.

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

The recently released version 2.9 of MiKTeX, which is the first MiKTeX release with LuaTeX integration, now supports ConTeXt Mark IV, as Christian Schenk announced.

TeX Live 2010 is available now.

Some changes in 2010, like announced in this blog post:

• pdfLaTeX automatically converts EPS files for inclusion, as already been planned but dismissed for the previous release
• The execution of a some external commands from TeX, via \write18, is now enabled by default.
• The default PDF version for the output is now 1.5 allowing a better compression.
• Some programs have been added: pTeX for Japanese typesetting, chktex, the dvisvgm converter, further BibTeXU for Unicode support in BibTeX.
• XeTeX now uses microtype for margin kerning but doesn’t support font expansion yet.

For more information and download visit

• the Homepage of TeX Live
• the list of changes
• TeX Live availability for download and dvd ordering,
• Donating to TUG Activities
• Contributing to TeX Live as user, author or developer.

The beta version of MiKTeX 2.9 has been released. Windows 7, Vista, XP (at least SP 3), Server 2003 and 2008 (at least SP 2) are supported, Windows 2000 no longer.
LuaTeX has been integrated for the first time and several software packages have been updated.

The final version of MiKTeX 2.9 will be released in October.

For more information visit

• the MiKTeX homepage,
• the 2.9 status page,
• the release notes,
• the blog announcement,
• the download/setup area.

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

Christian Schenk announced today that the support for MiKTeX 2.6 and MiKTeX 2.7 will end at the end of this year. MiKTeX 2.6/2.7 will be removed from CTAN on January 1st, 2011.

So, the last possible date for updating MiKTeX 2.6/2.7 over the internet is December 31st. Users of those versions are encouraged to switch to MiKTeX 2.9 expected to be released in October 2010.

German version | auf Deutsch

Christian Schenk has published the roadmap for MiKTeX 2.9. According to his blog the beta version of 2.9 shall appear in August and the general release of 2.9 is expected in October 2010. The new version will contain updates of pdfTeX, XeTeX, BibteX and of the editor TeXworks. LuaTeX will be introduced.

MiKTeX is a very popular LaTeX distribution running on Windows systems.

German version | auf Deutsch

Today Karl Berry announced that a pretest version of TeX Live 2010 is available now. It can be downloaded from certain repositories. The documentation has not yet been updated. The same may still apply to versions for some Unix platforms. But it’s in progress; by now you can obtain an early version of TL 2010 for testing. The TeX Live Team would be happy if you send them test reports and suggestions.

Some changes in 2010:

• When using pdfLaTeX EPS files can be automatically converted and included.
• The default PDF version for the output is now 1.5 allowing a better compression.
• Some new programs have been included: pTeX for Japanese typesetting, chktex, the dvisvgm converter, futher BibTeXU for Unicode support in BibTeX.

Fore more information and download visit the TeX Live testing page.

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

After development and many weeks of testing, final bug fixing and translations the new TeX Live 2009 has been released today.

Some changes and improvements in 2009:

• pdf(La)TeX now automatically converts included eps files to pdf, using the epstopdf package, if graphics.cfg is loaded and pdf output is chosen.
• The execution of certain external commands, for example epstopdf, makeindex, and bibtex, using \write18, is now enabled by default. The texmf.cnf file determines those commands.
• Updated AMS Type 1 fonts are included, the Euler fonts have been reshaped.
• The new editor TeXworks is included for Windows and MacTeX. Other distributions like Ubuntu and Debian Linux will provide this cross-platform editor with their own packaging system.
• Asymptote is included for several platforms.
• dvipdfm has been replaced by dvipdfmx.
• pdf is now the default output format for Lua(La)TeX. dvi output can be achieved by using the new executables dviluatex and dvilualatex.

In my opinion it’s a big step forward because several Linux Distributions like Ubuntu and Debian Linux are clinging to TL 2007 until now. While TL 2008 has been skipped the packaging for TL 2009 for Debian and Ubuntu is in progress, thanks to the work of especially Norbert Preining and Frank Küster. Though v2008 and v2009 worked fine on Linux it’s important to provide TeX with the distribution repositories, less workarounds will be necessary.

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