December 2018 LaTeX release available

We have released the December 2018 LaTeX distribution to CTAN. From there it will move to the major TeX distributions within a few days.

This release is a maintenance release in which we fixed a number of older and newer issues. The most important ones are documented in “LaTeX2e News Issue 29”. This document can be found on the LaTeX2e news page where you will also find release information for earlier LaTeX releases.

Topics are:

• Bug reports for LaTeX2e and packages
• Changes to the LaTeX kernel
• Changes to packages in the tools category
• Changes to packages in the amsmath category
• Website updates

Bug reporting and compatibility mechanism

We like to take the opportunity to thank everybody who provided helpful bug reports using the issue tracker that we are now using. Writing up a good issue report including a clear MWE (Minimal Working Example) takes some effort, but it is also essential to help us identifying and fixing issues. Details on how to report bugs can be found in the article “New rules for reporting bugs in the LaTeX core software”. Please consult this article if you intend to submit a problem.

While I have the stage I would also like to remind package developers and other interested parties to check out the rollback mechanism for packages that we introduced already with the last release. The more packages embrace this approach the better will it work for the users. Details on the rollback concept is given in “A rollback concept for packages and classes”.

Seasonal Greetings — Frank