News for Package X-Symbol

Development Version:	4.5.1-beta (12 May 2003).
Stable Version:	3.4.2 (28 Mar 2002).
Requirements:	Emacs-21.1, XEmacs-20.4, or higher.
Part of:	XEmacs SUMO package, ProofGeneral
Contact:	Please use menu entry Send Bug/Problem Report in submenu X-Symbol - Other Commands.
Licence:	GNU General Public License.

Support for Emacs, and XEmacs on MS-Windows with the development version, only. Support for XEmacs on MS-Windows/native is limited due to missing fonts (support for Latin-1, Latin-5 and half the math symbols only, no super- and subscripts).

New fonts for X-Symbol are being worked on. For details, see the special web page for additional fonts.

Package formats

Platform independent:	x-symbol-Version-pkg.tar.gz at SourceForge.net x-symbol-OthVers-pkg.tar.gz (with a different versioning scheme) at the XEmacs package directory
Red Hat	at SourceForge.net and FU Berlin (coming)
Debian:	at Debian (currently outdated)
Extended Souce:	x-symbol-Version-src.tar.gz at SourceForge.net (for developers and packagers)

Recommendation

Use the development version for XEmacs (where the status is "gamma"), too! Here are two reasons:

• XEmacs with Mule support: the stable version does not take a buffer file coding into account which is different from a standard file coding (e.g., if your files have a coding: tag). This was documented, but there is the danger of file corruption if you have not seen it.
• File content: the character representation via TeX macros and SGML entities has changed (see the manual) and it is better to use the new one. An "old-encoded" TeX/LaTeX file will not be changed if you visit and save it using by the development version (you will just see a few more braces in the buffer); there is a menu entry to use the new encoding.

Recent Changes

• Various bug fixes and minor changes.

Changes with Release 4.5-beta

• X-Symbol finally respects the Mule coding system of each individual buffer.

• Bug fix: would mess up encoding of math-mode characters with token language bib. Other conversion fixes for languages bib and texi.

• Bug fix (workaround for bug in XEmacs): auto-save files would have length 0.

• Bug fix (Emacs): package now works with package crypt/crypt++.

• Token language sgml: always encode characters to entity references by default (not possible with most Latin-N characters, where we still use character entities). Include hm--html-mode, html-helper-mode, remove sgml-mode as typical major modes which use X-Symbol.

• Token language tex: support some symbols of package `stmaryrd.sty'.

• Change the auto-style, formerly auto-mode, mechanism.

• Image support when running on Emacs.

• New input method Quail, a usual Mule input method.

• Corrected Latin-5 definitions. Support Latin-5 ("Turkish") on XEmacs running under Windows.

• X-Symbol works with Emacs/XEmacs running under a character terminal.

• Improments for external languages. Super-/subscript matching of token languages has changed.

• X-Symbol can use package format and does not require special fonts for super-/subscripts with Emacs-21.4+. Still open whether this will be used....

• Dropped support for XEmacs-20.3.

• Various bug fixes and minor changes.

Installation Instructions for XEmacs

1. Uncompress & extract x-symbol-Version-pkg.tar.gz in directory ~/.xemacs/xemacs-packages/.
2. Insert the following code into your Emacs init file (~/.emacs):

   (x-symbol-initialize)

3. If you want to customize X-Symbol, use menu item X-Symbol - General Options - Browse Customization.

Installation Instructions for Emacs-21.1

The following sequence works for me:

1. Uncompress & extract x-symbol-Version-pkg.tar.gz in some directory, mentioned as XSYMB below.
2. Recompile the lisp files for Emacs by invoking the following command in directory XSYMB:

   make -f etc/x-symbol/Makefile.emacs

3. Optionally: Remake the info file to use references to the Emacs manual, not XEmacs' one, by invoking the following commands in directory XSYMB/man/x-symbol:

   make EMACS=emacs -k info
   mv x-symbol.info ../../info/

4. Optionally: Include an entry for X-Symbol into XSYMB/info/dir. See X-Symbol's manual, section "Installing Manual".
5. In ~/.emacs, use (replacing XSYMB accordingly):

   (defvar x-symbol-root-directory (expand-file-name "XSYMB"))
   (defvar x-symbol-lisp-directory
           (expand-file-name "lisp/x-symbol" x-symbol-root-directory))
   (setq load-path (cons x-symbol-lisp-directory load-path))
   (setq x-symbol-data-directory
         (expand-file-name "etc/x-symbol" x-symbol-root-directory))
   (load (expand-file-name "auto-autoloads" x-symbol-lisp-directory))
   (or (fboundp 'custom-add-loads)
       (defun custom-add-loads (symbol list)
         (dolist (load list) (custom-add-load symbol load))))
   (load (expand-file-name "custom-load" x-symbol-lisp-directory))
   (x-symbol-initialize)

6. Restart Emacs (or evaluate the code above).
7. Check the characters by pressing C-= C-=. If they are not displayed correctly, set the font path in the shell before starting Emacs by (see the manual for details):

   xset fp+ XSYMB/etc/x-symbol/pcf/