l3news11.tex

% Copyright 2017 The LaTeX3 Project
\documentclass{ltnews}

\PassOptionsToPackage{colorlinks}{hyperref}

\usepackage{csquotes}
\usepackage{hologo}
\usepackage{ragged2e}
\usepackage{underscore}

\AtBeginDocument{%
  \renewcommand*{\LaTeXNews}{\LaTeX3~News}%
  \RaggedRight
  \setlength\parindent{1em}%
}

%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%

\publicationmonth{December}
\publicationyear{2017}
\publicationissue{11}

% Avoid hyphenation of csnames
\makeatletter
\protected\edef\cs#1{%
  \noexpand\path{\@backslashchar#1}%
}
\makeatother

\begin{document}

\maketitle

\textbf{Skeleton for next l3news ... sections to be added and filled in}

There has been something of a gap since the last \LaTeX3 News, but this does
not mean that work has not been going on. The Team have been working on a
number of areas, many of which reflect wider take-up of \pkg{expl3}. There have
also been a number of significant new developments in the \LaTeX3
\enquote{sphere} in the last year.

\section{Move of sources from SVN to Git}

For a long time we maintained the \LaTeX3 sources in SVN but also provided a
readonly clone of them on Github using a software from \textbf{provide
  name} to syncronize the two repositories---a solution that worked very well.

We have now retired the SVN repository and completely moved over to
Github.

\textbf{finish}





\section{\pkg{expl3} updates and extensions throughout the year}

\textbf{just a list of change notes, to be expanded and/or partially dropped}



\begin{itemize}
\item Remove deprecated function \cs{scan_align_safe_stop:}
\item Remove deprecated key properties \texttt{.value_required:}
  and \texttt{.value_forbidden:}
\item Bug fix for \cs{l_char_active_seq}
\item Index improvements in interface3/source3
\item Improve internal robustness of l3sort
\item Better uniformity for \texttt{rand()} and related
  FPU functions
\item Basic key inheritance in l3keys
\item New experimental functions for selecting random
  entries in seq data, etc.
\end{itemize}  

In this release the l3sort module is integrated
into l3kernel and so available directly on loading
expl3. As part of this move, the 'result' functions
have been renamed to
\begin{itemize}
\item \cs{sort_return_same:}
\item \cs{sort_return_swapped:}
\end{itemize}  
with the older names (\cs{sort_ordered:} and
\cs{sort_reversed:}) retained until the end of 2018.

This release also extends l3docstrip to aid with
the LaTeX23 'boundary': the notation \cs{@@@@par} in a
source will now yield \cs{@@par} in the live code.



\subsection{Boolean functions}

This release marks the functions
\cs{bool_lazy_all:n(TF)},
\cs{bool_lazy_and:nn(TF)},
\cs{bool_lazy_any:n(TF)} and
\cs{bool_lazy_or:nn(TF)}
as stable. This will be followed at a later date by a change in
\cs{bool_if:n(TF)}, which will move to being greedy: this change is
necessary as there are circumstances under which \cs{bool_if:n(TF)}
currently fails with a low-level error due to lazy evaluation.

Package authors are encouraged to consider employing these new functions
where appropriate.

\subsection{Version identifiers}

From this release the SVN \verb=$Id= lines are removed from \LaTeX3 sources. The
function \cs{GetIdInfo} is deprecated from this release, and the team
recommend that package authors include version information directly in
\cs{ProvidesExplPackage} (or similar) lines.


\begin{itemize}
\item New \cs{hbox_set_to_wd:Nnw} and \cs{vbox_set_to_ht:Nnw} functions
\item Revised l3file module to give better defined
  path/file/extension split
\item New experimental functions in l3file: \cs{file_input_stop:},
  \cs{file_get_mdfive_hash:nN}, \cs{file_get_size:nN} and
  \cs{file_get_timestamp:nN}; currently \hologo{XeTeX} does not support
  getting file size/timestamp
\item New experimental \cs{mode_leave_vertical:} as a code-level
  equivalent of \cs{leavevmode}
\item New experimental support for shell escape in l3sys module
\item New mechanism for checking variable declarations locally:
  see option "enable-debug" and
  \cs{debug_check_declarations_(on|off)}:
\item More invalid regex patterns trapped with warning
\item More regex documentation examples
\item Bug fix for \cs{tl_mixed_case:n(n)} with \hologo{pdfTeX} when the first
  character is outside the ASCII range
\item Fix nesting of selective setting in l3keys
\end{itemize}

\begin{itemize}
 \item Fix loading of l3str-format
 \item Fix handling of \cs{iow_newline:} in \cs{iow_wrap:nnnN}
 \item \cs{cs_generate_variant:Nn} now warns on incorrect variant
   relationships
 \item Better recovery by \cs{dim_set:Nn}, etc., if passed
   skip expressions
 \item Better handling of global/local consistency in variable
   setting
 \item String mappings now include space characters
 \item Revise l3doc to no longer require "[aux]" (deprecated) or
   "[int]" in code mark up: "[int]" is retained for cases where
   auto-detection of internals is not possible
 \item Deprecate \cs{token_new:Nn}
 \item Documentation improvements
\end{itemize}


\section{Wrong use of \cs{cs_generate_variant:Nn}}

\textbf{discuss why we are going to disallow some versions}



\section{\pkg{l3build} updates throughout the year}

\textbf{just a list of change notes, to be expanded and/or partially dropped}

\begin{itemize}
\item Retain test file name in .tlg files
\item Normalise out paths for image files
\item Macro support (regression-test.tex) updated such that
  all macros are documented, with some used for LaTeX2e kernel
  work removed
\item New typesetsourcefiles variables
\item Support for subdirectory structures in sources
\end{itemize}

Moved \pkg{l3build} to its own repository:

\url{https://github.com/latex3/l3build}

\begin{itemize}
\item Normalisation extended to cover
  register allocation and
  \cs{show} applied to boxes
\item New typesetruns variable
\item Documentation improvements
\end{itemize}


\textbf{.tlg files may be needed for this release}

\section{}

\section{}





\section{Looking forward}


\begin{thebibliography}{10}
  \raggedright
  \bibitem{project-publications}
    Links to various publications by members of the \LaTeX{} Project Team.
    \newblock \url{https://www.latex-project.org/publications}.
\end{thebibliography}

\end{document}