MiKTeX 2.6: Release Notes

Christian Schenk

Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies.

Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one.

Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in a translation approved by the Free Software Foundation.


Table of Contents

System requirements
Programs
Dvipdfmx
Dvipng
Dvips
MetaPost
pdfTeX
Windows Vista Adaption
Setup Wizard
MiKTeX SDK

System requirements

MiKTeX 2.6 will run on all Windows variants with the exception of Windows 95 and Windows NT.

Programs

Dvipdfmx

Dvipdfmx has been upgraded to version 20061211.

Dvipng

Dvipng has been upgraded to version 1.9.

Dvips

Dvips has been upgraded to version 5.96.

MetaPost

MetaPost has been upgraded to version 1.000.

pdfTeX

pdfTeX has been upgraded to version 1.40.3.

Windows Vista Adaption

MiKTeX 2.5 was not designed to be run on Windows Vista. But Microsoft added some shims to Windows Vista specifically for the MiKTeX 2.5 executables, i.e., Windows Vista includes built-in application-compatibility adaptions for MiKTeX 2.5.

The shims do not work for MiKTeX 2.6. For MiKTeX 2.6 it was necessary to implement code that copes with User Account Control (UAC). For example, TeX and Friends must be given permission to install files in the MiKTeX installation directory. Otherwise the auto-install feature will not work.

MiKTeX is now Windows Vista compliant, more or less. For the user, this means that the following tasks entail the Windows Vista consent prompt:

  • installing packages

  • registering root directories in a shared MiKTeX environment

Where possible, these administrative tasks are marked with the Windows Vista shield icon. For example, the auto-install confirmation window now shows as follows:

Clicking the Install button entails the Windows Vista consent prompt.

Setup Wizard

The command-line syntax for the installer has changed. Please read the man page, for more information.

MiKTeX SDK

MiKTeX now offers a few experimental COM objects which make it possible to automate MiKTeX specific tasks and to retrieve information about the MiKTeX installation:

  • install/remove packages

  • locate files

  • enumerate root directories

See the MiKTeX SDK page, for more information.