On Oct 30 2008 the Ubuntu team announced the release of Ubuntu 8.10 Desktop and Server. You can read about its features in the press release.

To download Ubuntu 8.10, or obtain CDs, see: Get Ubuntu. For instructions on upgrading to Ubuntu 8.10, visit: Upgrading to Ubuntu 8.10.
Upgrades to the latest version of Ubuntu are entirely free of charge as always.

Check out the release notes and look at the new features.

To get more information, visit www.ubuntu.com.

On October 30, 2008 the version 8.10 of Ubuntu Linux will be released. The user group Ubuntu Berlin is inviting to the Intrepid Ibex Release Party:

The party in the c-base Berlin will start on November 1, 2008, 4pm, admission will be free. There will be presentations showing new features of Ubuntu 8.10, its new network management, talks about first steps with Ubuntu and tuning the desktop. Of course I’ll be there too.

If you cannot come to Berlin but want to celebrate the Intrepid release too, have a look at the Intrepid release parties worldwide.

In addition to the shell scripts mentioned in this post I wrote another small script:

#!/bin/bash
# texcd - change into the directory
#   corresponding to a certain tex related file
if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then
  echo 1>&2 Usage:    . texcd filename [pattern]
  echo 1>&2 examples: . texcd beamer.cls
  exit 1
fi
cd `kpsewhich $1 | sed 's/\(.*\)\/.*$/\1/'`
echo Changed to: `pwd`

It’s purpose is to change into the directory where a certain tex related file resides. For instance if you want to search through some beamer class theme files, you don’t have to know the directory, just type
. texcd beamer.cls
and you will enter (for instance) the directory /usr/share/texmf/tex/latex/beamer/base/. The dot at the beginning of the command is important. Thats one reason why I show this small script too. Normally if you change the directory inside a script, after the script is finished you will be back inside the directory where you were before, because the script starts a new shell for itself. If you want to run the commands inside your current shell you can use the source command, the dot I’ve used is just an abbreviation for source.

Some additional hints I didn’t mention in the other post: instead of putting the scripts into your home directory you could copy them into your local file system, for instance:
sudo cp texcd /usr/local/bin/
and those scripts should be made executable using chmod:
chmod a+x /usr/local/bin/texcd
Thats recommendable for the other scripts too.

Today I had seen a post on mrunix.de where a user called for help, after an update of his MiKTeX installation he was not able to compile even simple latex files. Quickly it turned out that there had to be a problem with babel, because it was compilable without that package. Of course I wanted to help and I installed the same babel version on my TeXlive system, with the result that no tex file was compilable any more that used babel. I found out that there was a problem with hyphen.cfg. babel.def called a macro that’s defined by hyphen.cfg but the compiler said it wasn’t defined.

hyphen.cfg can be loaded into the format files, so I rebuilt all my format files:
fmtutil --all
Problem solved, at least for me, because the mrunix questioner uses MiKTeX. The corresponding call for MiKTeX should be
initexmf --dump
but of course I booted Windows to test that. I’ve purchased Windows Vista (Business) with my Computer but generally I don’t use it, so to give some advice is a good reason to start that OS. I started MiKTeX Update, updated babel and tried to compile a simple file using babel by TeXnicCenter, as anticipated it did not compile. Instead of calling initexmf I tested the way using MiKTeX Options:

Called MiKTeX Option in the Windows start menu, changed to the Format tab, clicked the pdflatex format and then the Build button. This way I only rebuilt the pdflatex profile, afterwards pdflatex was working fine again together with babel.

To sum up, one could say that if you update the babel package or if you want to use a new language with babel or change hyphenation, it’s recommendable to rebuild the format files as described above.

This topic was discussed on mrunix.de.

When writing LaTeX and redefining macros I frequently have to look at the source code of macros in LaTeX class files or plain TeX sources. I got used to kpsewhich, find, grep and xargs, but because I needed it often it became necessary to speed it up.
In order to find and edit tex files of the tex distribution I normally used kpsewhich with backticks like
gedit `kpsewhich scrartcl.cls`
And in order to find the source of a certain macro (beside \show) I used find and grep together with xargs.

A simple way to speed it up is to use shell scripts. For the tasks above I wrote two bash scripts today. The first equivalent to the one-liner above called texedit is:

#!/bin/bash
# texedit - find one or several tex related files
#   and open them in the editor
if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then
  echo 1>&2 Usage: texedit file1 [file2] ...
  exit 1
fi
gedit `kpsewhich $@`
exit 0

With it I just call for instance
texedit latex.ltx report.cls article.cls
to open these three files in the editor, no matter where they are in the texmf tree.
The other script called texgrep is:

#!/bin/bash
# texgrep - searches for a text pattern contained in files
#   located inside the texmf trees
# usage: texgrep pattern [extension]
# usage examples:
#   texgrep phantomsection sty
#   texgrep \\\\def\\\\phantomsection
# Stefan Kottwitz, 2008
if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then
  echo 1>&2 Usage: texgrep pattern [extension]
  exit 1
fi
for path in TEXMFMAIN TEXMFDIST TEXMFHOME
do
 find `kpsewhich --var-value=$path` -name "*$2" |xargs grep $1
done
exit 0

I’ve described the usage inside the comments of the script together with an example. I’ve already used those scripts several times and will use similar commands for similar tasks.

Just another example, calles texls:

#!/bin/bash
# texls - list the content of the directory
#   corresponding to a certain tex related file
if [ $# -eq 0 ]; then
  echo 1>&2 Usage:    texls filename [pattern]
  echo 1>&2 examples: texls babel.sty
  echo 1>&2           texls book.cls *clo
  exit 1
fi
ls `kpsewhich $1 | sed 's/\(.*\)\/.*$/\1\//'`$2
exit 0

If I want to list all files inside the directory of the babel package, I just type:
texls babel.sty
If I want to list all the language definition files of babel, I call:
texls babel.sty *ldf
Or to list all class option files of the LaTeX base classes:
texls book.cls *clo
After I found what I was looking for I usually call texedit.

The scripts are written for my own use with Ubuntu Linux and TeXlive, it should be easy to customize them for other needs and different Unix platforms.

I’ve posted similar scripts to a discussion on mrunix.de.

When I tried to help somebody to solve a problem in the LaTeX Community Forum, I wrote a short test file, but it was not compilable though it contained just basic commands. I reduced it to the following minimal example:

\documentclass[a4paper,10pt]{scrartcl}
\usepackage{listings}
\begin{document}
\lstlistoflistings
\end{document}

It was not compilable with TeXlive 2007 on Ubuntu Linux 8.04, the error message was:
! Undefined control sequence.
\lstlistoflistings ...\lol@heading \@parskipfalse
    \@parskip@indent \@startto...
l.5 \lstlistoflistings

After examining listings.sty it seemed to be just a compatibility issue: the listings version 1.3 of 2004/09/07 distributed with the texlive-latex-recommended package of Ubuntu Linux 8.04 (hardy) just doesn’t work with the scrartcl class of KOMA-Script v2.95b (2006/07/30) that comes with TeXlive 2007-13.

For instance scrartcl.cls v2.8 used \@parskip internally together with the parskip/halfparskip/parindent options, but that’s been changed.

After installation of version 1.4 of the listings package by the MiKTeX package manager the compilation was successful.

The line

\@parskipfalse\@parskip@indent%

of listings v1.3 had been changed in v.1.4 to

\parskip\z@\parindent\z@\parfillskip \z@ \@plus 1fil%

I’ve sent a bugreport by launchpad expecting that the new version of listings.sty will be distributed with the texlive package soon.