TeX Live 2022 released

Get the Champagne ready, we have released the final images of TeX Live 2022.

This year’s TeX Live release was one of the most unspectacular I can remember. No big problems, not last minute code changes, no panic updates in the last second. I still can’t believe it and wait every second for a Hiob’s message 😀 But well, it is out now and our usual update routine will return to normal after working through the backlog.

Before providing the full list of changes, here a few things I would like to pick out:

• hitex: a new engine with a new output format (!) specifically targetting mobile devices. I hope this will open up TeX to a more accessible mobile reading experience
• Japanese engines (ptex, eptex, euptex): lots of new primitives and better support for current LaTeX. It again shows that the Japanese developers are doing and incredible job!
• tlmgr: better installation algorithm that is more resilient to intermittent errors (patting myself!)

Most of the above features have been available already either via tlpretest or via regular updates, but are now fully released on the DVD version.

Thanks goes to all the developers, builders, the great CTAN team, and everyone who has contributed to this release!

Finally, here are the changes as listed in the master TeX Live documentation:

General:

• New engine hitex, which outputs its own HINT format, designed especially for reading technical documents on mobile devices. HINT viewers for GNU/Linux, Windows, and Android are available separately from TeX Live.
• tangle, weave: support optional third argument to specify output file.
• Knuth’s program twill for making mini-indexes for original WEB programs now included.

Cross-engine extensions (except in original TeX, Aleph, and hiTeX):

• New primitive \showstream to redirect \show output to a file.
• New primitives \partokenname and \partokencontext allow overriding the name of the \par token emitted at blank lines, the end of vboxes, etc.

epTeX, eupTeX:

• New primitives: \lastnodefont, \suppresslongerror, \suppressoutererror, \suppressmathparerror.
• pdfTeX extension \vadjust pre now available.

LuaTeX:

• Support structured destinations from PDF 2.0.
• PNG /Smask for PDF 2.0.
• Variable font interface for luahbtex.
• Different radical style defaults in mathdefaultsmode.
• Optionally block selected discretionary creation.
• Improvements for TrueType fonts implementation.
• More efficient \fontdimen allocation.
• Ignore paragraphs with only a local par node followed by direction synchronization nodes.

MetaPost: Bug fix for infinite macro expansion.

pdfTeX:

• Support structured destinations from PDF 2.0.
• For letterspaced fonts, use explicit \fontdimen6 if specified.
• Always start a warning at the beginning of a line.
• For characters with autokern (\pdfappendkern and \pdfprependkern), still do protrusion; likewise, autokern both implicit and explicit hyphens.

pTeX et al.:

• Major update of pTeX to 4.0.0 to better support current LaTeX.
• New primitives \ptexlineendmode and \toucs.
• \ucs (formerly available in uptex, euptex) now available also in pTeX and epTeX.
• Distinguish 8-bit characters and Japanese characters as discussed in a TUGboat article by Hironori Kitagawa.

XeTeX: New wrapper scripts xetex-unsafe and xelatex-unsafe for simpler invocation of documents requiring both XeTeX and PSTricks transparency operators, which is inherently unsafe (until and unless reimplementation in Ghostscript happens). For safety, use Lua(LA )TeX.

Dvipdfmx:

• Support for PSTricks without requiring -dNOSAFER, except for transparency.
• The -r option to set bitmap font resolution works again.

Dvips: By default, do not attempt automatic media adjustment for rotated paper sizes; the new option –landscaperotate re-enables.

upmendex: Experimental support for Arabic and Hebrew scripts; improved character classification and language support.

Kpathsea: First path returned from kpsewhich -all is now the same as a regular (non-all) search.

tlmgr and infrastructure:

• use https for mirror.ctan.org by default.
• use TEXMFROOT instead of SELFAUTOPARENT for easier relocating.
• install-tl: if download or installation fails for a given package, automatically continue and later retry (once).

MacTeX: MacTeX and its binary folder universal-darwin require macOS 10.14 or higher (Mojave, Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey). The x86_64-darwinlegacy binary folder, available only with the Unix install-tl, supports 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and newer.

Platforms: No changes to platform support for this year (2022). However, for next year’s release (2023), we are planning to switch the Windows binaries from 32-bit to 64-bit. Unfortunately we cannot feasibly support both simultaneously.

That’s all, let the fun begin! And again, thanks to all the developers, builders, the great CTAN team, and everyone who has contributed to this release!