** New Features in MacTeX-2013 and TeX Live 2013 **

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MacTeX-2013

MacTeX-2013 installs updated versions of the GUI applications that were already in MacTeX-2012.

MacTeX has optional packages to install two font collections (Latin Modern and TeX Gyre) in /Library/Fonts; these TeX fonts are already in TeX Live, but installing them in /Library/Fonts makes them available to standard Macintosh applications like Adobe Illustrator. By default, these fonts are not installed.

MacTeX installs the latest version of Ghostscript, 9.07, and an updated "Convert" from ImageMagick 6.8.3-3. These packages are self-contained; MacTeX installs no libraries in /usr/local/lib.

In prior years, MacTeX was provided as a zip file. The install package was rewritten last year using Apple's modern PackageMaker, so this year's MacTeX-2013.pkg is a flat file which doesn't have to be zipped for a server or unzipped after downloading. The package is signed so it can be installed on Mountain Lion.

TeX Live 2013

MacTeX-2013 installs a completely unmodified copy of the full TeX Live 2013 distribution. This is exactly the same distribution that runs on OS X, Windows, GNU/Linux, various BSD Unix systems, and other systems.

MacTeX-2013 contains two binary directories. The first, universal-darwin, contains 32 bit binaries for both Intel and PowerPC processors; these run on all Macs which have OS X 10.5 or later. The second, x86_64-darwin, contains 64 bit Intel binaries compiled on Snow Leopard; these programs run only on Intel machines which are 64 bit capable and are running Snow Leopard, Lion, or Mountain Lion, or higher. Our tests show that the 32 bit binaries run very fast on 64 bit machines, so most users won't notice the difference between these two sets of binaries. Since the 32 bit binaries run fine on Leopard, we had the luxury of compiling 64 bit binaries only for Snow Leopard, where we could use Apple's modern libraries.

For the first time in 2013, all programs in x86_64-darwin are 64 bit programs; in particular, XeTeX is now a 64 bit program.

For new features in TeX Live 2013, see The TeX Live Guide for TeX Live 2013. Here is a summary:

• Distribution layout: the top-level texmf/ directory has been merged into texmf-dist/, for simplicity. Both the TEXMFMAIN and TEXMFDIST Kpathsea variables now point to texmf-dist.

• Language collections are merged, to simplify installation and updates.

• metapost: native support for PNG output and floating-point (IEEE double) has been added.

• luatex: updated to Lua 5.2, and includes a new library (pdfscanner) to process external PDF page content.

• xetex:
  • The HarfBuzz library now used for font layout instead of ICU. (ICU is still used to support input encodings, bidirectionality, and the optional Unicode line breaking.)

  • Graphite2 and HarfBuzz are used instead of SilGraphite for Graphite layout.

  • On Macs, Core Text is used instead of the (deprecated) ATSUI.

  • Prefer TrueType/OpenType fonts to Type1 when the names are the same.

  • Fix occasional mismatch in font finding between xetex and xdvipdfmx.

  • Support OpenType math cut-ins.

  • Most of these changes are due to Khaled Hosny, who took over maintenance of the program from Jonathan Kew. The important conversion from ATSUI to Core Text, which makes it possible to compile XeTeX in 64 bits on a Macintosh, is due to Jiang Jiang.

• xdvi: now uses freetype instead of t1lib for rendering.

• microtype.sty: some support for xetex (protrusion) and luatex (protrusion, font expansion, tracking), among other enhancements.

• tlmgr: new pinning action to ease configuring multiple repositories; that section in tlmgr --help has more.

We'd like to call attention to three changes in TeX Live 2010 which remain important today:

• pdf(La)TeX now automatically converts a requested Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) file to PDF when PDF is being output. The default options are intended to eliminate any chance of hand-created PDF files being overwritten, but you can also prevent the conversion by putting \newcommand{\DoNotLoadEpstopdf}{} (or \def...) before the \documentclass declaration. Conversion also does not occur if the pst-pdf package is used. For more details, see the epstopdf package documentation (http://ctan.org/pkg/epstopdf-pkg [ctan.org]).

• A related change is that execution of a very few external commands from TeX, via the \write18 feature, is now enabled by default. These commands are repstopdf, makeindex, kpsewhich, bibtex, and bibtex8; the list is defined in texmf.cnf. Environments which must disallow all such external commands can deselect this option after installation by running
  tlmgr conf texmf shell_escape 0.

• Since 2010, the default version for PDF output is 1.5, enabling more compression. This applies to all the TeX engines when used to produce PDF and to dvipdfmx. Loading the pdf14 LaTeX package changes back to PDF 1.4, or set \pdfminorversion=4.