TeX Live 2023 - bugs and updates

Most of TeX Live is a redistribution of packages and programs from elsewhere, primarily CTAN. So, the place to send bug reports varies:

• If you have problems with a TeX document, e.g., a package is behaving differently, report it to the package maintainer. As a rule, package-specific fixes are not installed directly in TL; instead, new versions of packages should be uploaded to CTAN.
• If you have questions about using TeX, or need help with TeX, please use the general help resources.
• To report a bug in TeX Live installation or infrastructure, email the public mailing list tex-live@tug.org (public archives).
• For security-related reports, please use the tlsecurity@tug.org mailing list (private archives).

Common requests:

• If you need to use alternate binaries, our recommended approach is the custom binary support in the TL installer. Numerous additional binary sets are available through links on that page. Compiling from source is also an option.
• TL does not provide modules for scripting languages, or interpreters themselves (except for texlua; and, only on Windows, a minimal Perl). Thus it is up to users to install any needed dependencies of third-party scripts. More info.

Known issues in TeX Live 2023

The four LuaTeX binaries (luatex luahbtex luajitex luajithbtex) were rebuilt in early May, 2023; the fixed version is 1.17.0. All installations should upgrade. Current TL has binaries for the new version on all supported platforms. Updated x86_64-linux binaries are available for all TL releases since 2017 in the historic archive (subdirectory systems/texlive/YYYY/patches/); 32-bit Windows binaries are also available, built from the TL23 sources (though TL23 itself does not include any 32-bit Windows binaries). More info.

The change that's most likely to be noticeable is that the socket library is now disabled by default; a new command line option --socket enables it, as well as --shell-escape (not --shell-restricted). In addition, the mime library is now always available, and new functions os.socketsleep and os.socketgettime are also always available. Finally, some obscure ways to work around various security features were fixed.

Notable changes

As always, there were pervasive updates to packages and programs (highlights of changes). We can't list them all, but here are some of the principal user-visible changes:

Windows

As announced previously, TeX Live now contains 64-bit Windows binaries instead of 32-bit. The new directory name is bin/windows (it did not seem right to put 64-bit binaries into a directory named with “32”). We know this will cause extra work for Windows users, but there seemed no better alternative. See the separate TeX Live Windows page for more.

ConTeXt

At the request of the ConTeXt maintainers, TeX Live now includes ConTeXt LMTX (known by several names), based on the new LuaMetaTeX engine by Hans Hagen. The previous pdfTeX-based version is no longer included, and there are only three executables: luametatex (the binary), context and mtxrun (both symlinks to luametatex). (Preprint of forthcoming TUGboat article about this.)

Binaries are provided for most platforms, but not as many as before. LuaMetaTeX is not built as part of TL, since it uses an entirely different build system (cmake instead of automake); so, anyone who wants it on a platform not provided needs to build it from the LuaMetaTeX source (snapshot included in TL in the source/ tree).

Cross-engine extensions

In engines except for original TeX and e-TeX:

• \special followed by a new keyword “shipout” delays expansion of the argument tokens until \shipout time, as with a non-\immediate\write.

euptex (full ChangeLog)

• “Raw” (u)ptex no longer built; (u)ptex now runs in e(u)ptex's compatibility mode. Same for pTeX tools, listed below.
• New primitives: \tojis, \ptextracingfonts, \ptexfontname.
• For \font, new syntax for JIS/UCS is supported.

luatex (full LuaTeX news)

• new primitive \variablefam to allow math characters to keep their class while still letting the family adapt.
• improved r2l annotation areas
• cross-engine “late \special” described above.

metapost (full MetaPost news)

Bug fixes: svg->dx and svg->dy are now double, for better precision; mp_begin_iteration updated; memory leak in mplib fixed.

pdftex (full pdfTeX news)

• new primitive \pdfomitinfodict to omit /Info dictionary completely.
• new primitive \pdfomitprocset to control omitting /ProcSet array: /ProcSet is included if this parameter is negative, or if this parameter is zero and pdftex is generating PDF 1.x output.
• with \pdfinterwordspaceon, if the current font's encoding has a /space character at slot 32, it is used; otherwise, the /space from the (new) default font pdftexspace is used. That default font can be overridden with the new primitive \pdfspacefont. This same new procedure is used for \pdffakespace.

ptex et al. (full pTeX news)

• As mentioned above, ptex now runs eptex in compatibility mode instead of being built separately.
• pTeX tools (pbibtex, pdvitype, ppltotf, ptftopl) merged into corresponding upTeX versions, running in compatibility mode.

xetex (full XeTeX news)

bug fix for \topskip and \splittopskip computation when \XeTeXupwardsmode is active; the cross-engine “late \special” described above.

bibtexu (full bibtexu news)

• This BibTeX variant is mostly upward-compatible with bibtex, with much better (Unicode-based) multilingual support. It's been in TL for some years.
• This year, more features to support CJK languages have been added, some extended from the Japanese (u)pbibtex and other programs.

dvipdfmx (full dvipdfmx news)

• new option --pdfm-str-utf8 to make pdfmark and/or bookmark.

kpathsea (full Kpathsea news)

Support guessing input file encodings for Unix-ish platforms, as on Windows; enabled for (e)p(la)tex, pbibtex, mendex.

tlmgr (full tlmgr news)

• default to text interface on macOS.
• install core packages first, retry other packages once.
• simplistic checks for enough disk space.

MacTeX

• MacTeX and its binary folder universal-darwin require macOS 10.14 or higher (Mojave, Catalina, Big Sur, Monterey, Ventura). The x86_64-darwinlegacy binary folder, available only with the Unix install-tl, supports 10.6 (Snow Leopard) and later.
• The GUI package in MacTeX now contains hintview, a macOS viewer for HINT documents (created by the hitex and hilatex engines for mobile devices; see the HiTeX web page for more). The GUI package no longer installs a folder of documents, replacing them with a short READ ME for new users and a page about hintview.
• The Extras folder of additional TeX sofware on the DVD has been replaced with a document containing links to download sites.

Platforms

• As mentioned above, the new windows binary directory contains 64-bit Windows binaries, and:
• the bin/win32 binary directory is gone, since we cannot feasibly support 32-bit and 64-bit Windows simultaneously.
• The i386-cygwin binary directory is gone, since Cygwin no longer supports i386.

Bug archives for the previous release and earlier years remain online (under systems/texlive; both the initial release each year, and the frozen state at the end of the cycle in tlnet-final).

If you discover other changes that should be noted, please send them in.