March 21, 2022
siunitx v3.1: complex values
I mentioned recently that I’m working on
features for siunitx v3.1. One area that I’ve
now been able to commit is improvements to handling complex values.
March 11, 2022
siunitx v3.1 development
I’ve now done 49 (!) minor releases of siunitx
on the v3.0.x branch. These have addressed quite a few minor bugs: I expected
to have to do a bit of work since the shift from v2 was quite major.
November 19, 2021
siunitx v3 successes
The third major release of siunitx was out in
May, after the TeX
Live 2021 DVD. That means it’s been picked up
primarily by more active users: people who install TeX between the ‘fixed’ DVD
releases (or who use MiKTeX). It also didn’t initially
appear on Overleaf, as they take a while to test TeX
Live images before making them public.
November 19, 2021
A new theme
I’ve been meaning for a little while to look properly at my Jeykll theme for the site and tidy it up: it was a bit basic. Prompted in part by Will Robertson, I decided that now is the moment.
August 24, 2021
Talking about units
Usually, I keep my day job (as a university lecturer in chemistry) and my LaTeX work separate. Of course, I use LaTeX at work for things like lecture handouts, but most of the time the two areas don’t directly intersect.
May 17, 2021
Moving from siunitx v2 to v3
With v3 of siunitx out, I am as expected
getting quite a few questions about moving from v2. In the main, this is quite
easy as there is a decent amount of compatibility code. Here, I’ll pick out
a few cases where you might want some adjustments.
May 10, 2021
siunitx v3 beta 2
Following up on the recent first beta for
siunitx, I’ve now made a second beta
available. There was only
one issue picked up so far by testers, plus of course those I’ve spotted myself.
In particular, I’ve allowed a way to set the text font manually if simply
resetting back to the standard one doesn’t work. I’ve also sneaked in a late
addition: the ability to parse and print uncertainties the way NIST seem to
suggest they should appear.
April 16, 2021
siunitx v3 beta
I’ve been talking about a new version of
siunitx for
ages. Progress has been slow but I’ve now put
my back into it and got to a feature-complete version: I’m calling this
v3.0.0-beta. As this is a beta release, it’s not ready for production just
yet, but it is ready for proper testing. I’ve made the TDS-style zip file
available here; if you
know how to use this kind of file, please download and test!
August 20, 2020
\NewDocumentCommand versus \newcommand versus ...
Creating new document commands in LaTeX has traditionally been the job of
\newcommand. This lets you create command with mandatory arguments, and can
also add a first optional argument. However, it can’t create more complex
commands: LaTeX uses for example stars, multiple optional arguments, etc. To
create these, the kernel itself uses lower-level TeX programming. But this is
opaque to many users, and a variety of packages have been created to ease the
burden.
August 19, 2020
The good, the bad and the ugly: creating document commands
Creating document commands in LaTeX has traditionally involved a mix of
\newcommand, semi-internal kernel commands (like \@ifnextchar and
\@ifstar) and low-level TeX programming using \def. As part of wider
efforts to improve LaTeX, the team have over the past few years improved
xparse to the point where it is capable
of creating a vast array of document commands.