MiKTeX Blog

MiKTeX 2.9 (to be released this month) supports the following operating systems:

• Windows 7
• Windows Vista with Service Pack 2 (all editions except Starter Edition)
• Windows XP with Service Pack 3 (all editions except Starter Edition)
• Windows Server 2008 R2
• Windows Server 2008 with Service Pack 2
• Windows Server 2003 R2
• Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 2

MiKTeX 2.9 will not run on Windows 2000. This is a breaking change.

A GNU/Linux version of MiKTeX 2.9 is not planned at this time.

It is time to sync MiKTeX with recent technology boosts (XeTeX character protrusion, LuaTeX). So here we go. This is the MiKTeX 2.9 roadmap.

August 2010: MiKTeX 2.9 Beta

• Some upgrades (pdfTeX, XeTeX, TeXworks, MetaPost, BibTeX, ...)
• For the first time: LuaTeX

October 2010: MiKTEX 2.9 (general availability release)

December 2010: Yap enhancements

• The DVI previewer (Yap) will be revised to bring back the MiKTeX 2.4 render method

PS: A special thanks to all who have donated to the MiKTeX project. You make it possible!

A beta release of MiKTeX Portable is now available. The portable edition allows you to carry MiKTeX on a portable storage device for use on any Windows computer. By using the portable edition you leave no traces on the host computer and you do not need administrator privileges. Please visit www.miktex.org/portable/ for more information.

A portable MiKTeX edition will be available later this year. The portable edition allows you to run MiKTeX from a portable flash drive:

• you carry MiKTeX on a portable drive for use on any Windows computer
• configuration settings are stored on the portable drive and not on the host computer
• by using the portable edition, you leave no traces on the host computer
• you do not need administrator privileges on the host computer

A beta will be released soon.

A new release for GNU/Linux will be available later this week. It is tagged "MiKTeX Tools 2.8 Beta 2".

What's new

• MiKTeX-pdfTeX, the MiKTeX variant of the pdfTeX angine, has been ported.
• Binary packages (deb/rpm/tgz) are now available for i386 GNU/Linux systems.

MiKTeX-pdfTeX

The engine features integrated package management: missing packages will be installed on-the-fly (after confirmation).

The binary is installed as miktex-pdftex so that it can coexist with the pdftex binary of the host TeX system.

Availability

Binary packages (deb/rpm/tgz) and source code will be released later this week. Keep an eye on the MiKTeX Tools home page (http://miktex.org/unx/).

MiKTeX 2.8 Beta 1 is available! This is a source code release for GNU/Linux.

Please visit the 2.8 status page, if you want to try it out.

What's new

The MiKTeX package manager graphical user interface (GUI) has been ported to GNU/Linux using the Qt widget toolkit.

The GUI allows you to browse the package database and install packages.

What comes next

This is the todo list for the upcoming beta releases:

• MiKTeX-pdfTeX for GNU/Linux:
  The MiKTeX variant of pdfTeX has the MiKTeX package manager
  integrated. This feature makes it possible to install missing packages
  on-the-fly.
• LuaTeX integration

I have started MiKTeX 2.8 development a short while ago. Here is what has been done and what will happen in the next couple of months:

MiKTeX package manager GUI (Linux)

My development progress bar shows sixty percent.

What has been done:

• package information is displayed in a list view window
• it is possible to install/remove packages
  

What is missing:

• search for packages (using file names or keywords
  

The source code will be made available soon.

Coding this initial version was fun. I have learned many new things (Qt, Unix build tools, ...). Not a waste of time. But:

Now that TeX Live has a nice package manager of its own, I do not
expect much interest in the MiKTeX package manager for Linux. That
said, I only will continue to spend time on this project, if more
pledges come in. See http://micropledge.com/projects/miktex-mpm-qt?do=pledge, for more information.

LuaTeX integration

Nothing happened yet. I took a look at the LuaTeX development sources and discovered no stumbling points. On principle, it should be possible to integrate LuaTeX. And I will start this task in October. It remains to be seen whether LuaTeX will be successful. At the moment, only ConTeXt seems to make use of its features.

pdfTeX for Linux

I will make available the MiKTeX version of pdfTeX for Linux.

Sad but true: It is not likely that MiKTeX 2.7 works on legacy Windows systems (9x/Me/NT). It seems that the new build system, Visual Studio 2008, does not support legacy targets.

I am planning to make available a beta version of MiKTeX 2.7 in September. This will contain XeTeX 0.996. The 2.7 status page will be updated soon.

MiKTeX 2.6 will offer COM interfaces that make it possible to automate MiKTeX-specific tasks. More...