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!

As I’ve said before, there are a lot of internal improvements in the code. There are also some big changes which do show to users. The major changes are

  • The name for commands for units and quantities have changed: \unit and \qty. The old names (\si and \SI) are still about, but I’d encourage people to move to the new ones.
  • Font set up is entirely revised, which means that there are new settings to use if you want to adjust the output. The new approach should be faster and cleaner than the old one, but you might have to pick new options.
  • Products of numbers now have a dedicated interface: \numproduct, with a matching \qtyproduct for quantities
  • Complex numbers also have decided interfaces: \complexnum and \complexqty: this makes parsing a lot easier
  • A small number of ideas have been removed: most notably parsing quotients
  • I’ve updated the units provided to match the 9th SI Brochure: that means a few units are removed (for example ängström and bar)

To support users and to avoid breaking any documents, the new code is accompanied by a (likely) final version 2 file. That can be loaded using

\usepackage{siunitx}[=v2]

where needed.

What I’m looking for now is feedback on what works, what I’ve missed, etc. Feedback is best in issues on GitHub. You might notice I’m already planning v3.1 and v3.2: the new structures should make more development possible. But at the moment I’m mainly trying to finalise v3.0.