History of Changes to techexplorer

In this document we describe the changes that have occurred between versions of techexplorer.

Version 3.0 (20 October, 2000)

Common

  1. Implemented many new LaTeX and MathML symbols. See MathML entities supported.
  2. Implemented many new accents. See Supported accents.
  3. Implemented \verb in \input.
  4. Implemented a work-around to a known Netscape bug by opening a new Netscape window when using \doclink to display a GIF or JPEG.
  5. Added URL support for \includeverbatim and \includeMathML.
  6. Resolved an issue with IE where an entity in an embedded object made IE crash.
  7. Resolved an issue where the techexplorer plugin on IE could not find an input file over the web.
  8. Resolved an issue with the techexplorer splash screen where Netscape crashed.
  9. Resolved a memory allocation issue when the browser closed with the Parsing Errors dialog still active.
  10. Resolved an issue where the Parsing Errors dialog did not always act modally.
  11. Resolved a URL localhost issue by ignoring the host component of file URLs. (techexplorer does not support the host part of a file URL.)
  12. Resolved an issue where loading recursive \input files caused the browser to crash.
  13. Resolved an issue in content MathML regarding the correct placement of parentheses.

Professional Edition

  1. Completely revised the GraphIT documentation example applet.
  2. Added convertMMLtoTeX and convertTeXtoMML Java methods for translating mathematical equations between LaTeX and MathML.
  3. Resolved an issue in the ActiveX control where the Parsing Errors dialog activated despite the option being off.
  4. Resolved an issue where the Find option crashed the browser.
  5. Added default children when creating a TMmlFractionNode or TMmlRootNode with the DOM API call createElement.

Microsoft Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT

The feature described is only available in the Professional Edition of techexplorer.
  1. A Mathematica add-in!

Macintosh

The feature described is only available in the Professional Edition of techexplorer.
  1. A Macintosh version of the Professional Edition of techexplorer!

UNIX

  1. Resolved an issue where embedded techexplorer objects disappeared on Solaris.
  2. Resolved a relative path issue on Linux.

Version 3.0 PR 1 (21 July, 2000)

Common

  1. LaTeX-related changes:
  2. MathML related changes:

Microsoft Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT

The feature described is only available in the Professional Edition of techexplorer.
  1. An ActiveX Control Professional edition!
  2. A panel was added to the options dialog that allows users to activate and deactivate add-ins.
  3. Many Document Object Model fixes, enhancements and new objects to reflect the MathML and LaTeX additions.

Macintosh

  1. A Macintosh version of the Introductory Edition of techexplorer!

UNIX

  1. Distribution now extracts into a directory named techexplor.

Version 2.5.2 (10 March, 2000)

Microsoft Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT

  1. Fixed a bug where version 2.5.1 would not work under Microsoft Internet Explorer.
The feature described is only available in the Professional Edition of techexplorer.
  1. Added ReplaceChild operations to link node types
  2. When copying MathML nodes the content is now invalidated
  3. Fixed a bug in copying mathml attribute nodes
  4. Improved assertions regarding root/parent handling during node adoption

Version 2.5.1 (14 February, 2000)

Common

  1. Background image loading was improved to be more robust in the presence of errors.
  2. Fixed a problem with loading images when pages include multiple references to the same image.
  3. Updated \limits so that it does not interfere with scripts.
  4. Support for the * argument to tabular forms.
  5. Corrected a problem with alignment information for eqnarray.

Microsoft Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT

The feature described is only available in the Professional Edition of techexplorer.
  1. Patch released for upgrading the Professional Edition of techexplorer Version 2.0 to Version 2.51.
  2. Patch released for upgrading the Professional Edition of techexplorer Version 2.5 to Version 2.51.
  3. Updated library for Java application development. This fixes a problem where Document Object Model nodes where not being recycled appropriately.
  4. Added getHeightFromTeXStringAndWidth( String TeXString, int width ) Java API method for dynamically sizing LaTeX documents embedded in HTML.

Version 2.5 (29 November, 1999)

Microsoft Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT

The feature described is only available in the Professional Edition of techexplorer.
  1. Enhanced C++ add-in and Java API.
  2. Support for the W3C Document Object Model (DOM) Level 1 API for LaTeX and MathML documentsI.
  3. Enhanced the search facility.
  4. Fixed a problem whereby a page break would not be inserted for footnotes while printing.

UNIX

  1. Support for multiple color depths.
  2. Added support for the \includeMathML, \begin{MathML}, and \end{MathML} control sequences to allow for external MathML files to be included in LaTeX documents, and to allow for inline MathML expressions in LaTeX documents.

Version 2.5 PR 2 Introductory Edition (27 September, 1999)

Common

  1. Support for lists of tables and figures.
  2. MathML Content element tag improvements.
  3. Document selection enhancements.

UNIX

  1. We now have a AIX, Solaris, and SGI version of the Version 2.5 PR 2 Introductory Edition!

Version 2.5 PR 1 Introductory Edition (5 March, 1999)

Common

  1. Added support for the MathML Content element tag set, including parsing of all content tags and attributes, and rendering of all content elements and many of the associated attributes.
  2. Added support for most of the picture environment.
  3. Added support for counters in headings, though they are not shown by default yet (we set secnumdepth = -2 so that documents that have had section numbers manually inserted will not have two sets of numbers displayed).
  4. Added support for the pseudo:aboveTopic, pseudo:nextTopic, and pseudo:previousTopic URL pseudo-types so that the values defined via \aboveTopic, \nextTopic, and \previousTopic, respectively, can be used in a \docLink.
  5. Added parsing support for optional arguments for \includegraphics as specified in the graphics package.
  6. You can now use {,} in math mode to suppress the extra space after the comma.
  7. Miscellaneous formatting fixes.

Microsoft Windows 95, Windows 98, and Windows NT

  1. Added support for the \includeMathML, \begin{MathML}, and \end{MathML} control sequences to allow for external MathML files to be included in LaTeX documents, and to allow for inline MathML expressions in LaTeX documents. (In a later release, this will work on all platforms.)
  2. Fixed hourglass cursor flicker during scrollbar action.

Linux

  1. We now have a Linux version of the Introductory Edition!

Version 2.01 (21 October, 1998)

Common

  1. Added support for \char.
  2. Added support for \texteuro.
  3. Added support for the javascript URL type so that JavaScript code can be passed to the browser for evaluation.

Version 2.0 (4 June, 1998)

Common

  1. Documents now have their own symbol tables that take precedence over the global symbol table. Thus macros defined with \def or \newcommand go into the document symbol table and are not shared. Similarly, the result of \newenvironment is placed in the document symbol table. Macros defined with \gdef or the equivalent \global\def are placed in the global symbol table.
  2. Added \globalnewcommand and \globalnewenvironment to put macros and environment definitions into the global symbol table.
  3. Added support for LaTeX counters. The commands \newcounter, \addtocounter, \stepcounter, \refstepcounter, \value, \arabic, \alph, \Alph, \roman, \Roman, and \fnsymbol are all defined, as is \thecounter when \newcounter{counter} has been issued. The counters part, chapter, section, subsection, subsubsection, paragraph, subparagraph, page, equation, figure, table, footnote, mpfootnote, enumi, enumi, enumi, and enumv are all predefined, though most are not yet used internally.
  4. Defined and implemented \ProvidesFeature and \RequiresFeature.
  5. Fixed a problem that caused a crash when the minipage environment was used.
  6. We now parse but then ignore the optional position argument for the array and tabular environments.
  7. We now parse but then ignore the optional height and inner position argument for \parbox and the minipage environment.
  8. Added support for captions and automatic numbering in figures and tables. The commands \thefigure and \thecaption can be redefined to yield custom numbering of figures and tables, respectively.
  9. Improved support for footnotes via the footnote counter. The command \thefootnote can be redefined to yield custom numbering of footnotes, e.g., \renewcommand{\thefootnote}{\Roman{footnote}}.
  10. Improved positioning of subscripts.
  11. Added \ensuredisplaymath. If not already in some math mode, this will create a display math environment and format the contents within it.
  12. Added simple implementations of the align, align*, gather, and gather* environments.
  13. \footnotemark is now no-oped and \footnotetext acts like footnote.
  14. A number encountered when parsing a unit can now contain a comma instead of a period.
  15. Added \gradientbox.
  16. Added \backgroundsound as a synonym for \includeaudio.
  17. Added \backgroundcolor as a synonym for \pagecolor.
  18. The "dummy image" for missing bitmaps is not displayed for \backgroundimage.
  19. Added no-op support for \outer.
  20. Added \underbar.

Microsoft Windows 95 and Windows NT

The feature described is only available in the Professional Edition of techexplorer.
  1. Added printing for full documents that techexplorer displays. You can invoke printing from the browser File menu or toolbar, or from the techexplorer document context menu.
  2. Added support for the new techexplorer symbol fonts.
  3. Added searching of simple phrases. This is available from the document context menu. techexplorer document context menu.

UNIX

  1. Fixed the mapping for \iota in the standard fonts.

Version 2.0 PR 3 (17 March, 1998)

Common

  1. Renamed the Standard Edition to be the Introductory Edition.
  2. Many internal performance improvements.
  3. Decreased the relative sizes of the fonts bigger than the normal size.
  4. Added support for \newenvironment without the optional argument.
  5. Can now handle %20 in URLs.
  6. Enhanced the handling of control sequences that expect filenames so that now macro arguments will be expanded. Thus you can now use \includegraphics in a macro definition with the URL being one of the macro arguments.
  7. Fixed a problem whereby the title page information was placed at the location of \maketitle rather than at the top of the document.
  8. Fixed a problem whereby footnotes in title pages were not active.
  9. Fixed a problem concerning incorrect handling of links with \hbox to \hsize expressions.
  10. Although they are still unnumbered, \ref, \pageref, and \eqref now act as hyperlinks if the corresponding label is in the same document.
  11. Added AMS-TeX macros \iff, \implies, and \impliedby.
  12. An \index control sequence is now treated as a label with label name INDEX- followed by ASCIIfied version of the index term. Thus \index{matrix} generates the internal label INDEX-matrix. Blanks are allowed in the corresponding label names.
  13. We now parse and then ignore the following LaTeX and TeX style parameters: \abovedisplayshortskip, \abovedisplayskip, \arraycolsep, \arrayrulewidth, \baselineskip, \baselinestretch, \belowdisplayshortskip, \belowdisplayskip, \bibindent, \columnsep, \columnseprule, \dblfloatsep, \dbltextfloatsep, \doublerulesep, \evensidemargin, \fboxrule, \fboxsep, \file, \floatsep, \footnotesep, \footskip, \hangafter, \hangindent, \headheight, \headsep, \hsize, \intextsep, \jot, \leftskip, \linewidth, \magnification, \marginparpush, \marginparsep, \marginparwidth, \mathindent, \oddsidemargin, \pageheight, \pagewidth, \parindent, \parskip, \rightskip, \tabbingsep, \tabcolsep, \textfloatsep, \textheight, \textwidth, \topmargin, \topskip, and \vsize. (Note that we won't always ignore them in the future!)

Microsoft Windows 95 and Windows NT

  1. Fixed image problem when using Internet Explorer and documents from web sites.
  2. Added more multimedia support via \includeaudio and \includevideo. (Professional Edition only.)
  3. Renamed the Security property page to be the Permissions property page and added checkboxes for autoplaying audio and video.

UNIX

  1. SGI IRIX 6.2 version of techexplorer.
  2. Support for the following control sequences for hypermedia links: \popupLink, \yesNoLink, \inputboxLink, \appLink, \statusLineText and \backgroundimage.
  3. Rudimentary parse error support.
  4. Property pages for Security and Errors are now enabled.
  5. Can now handle inline TeX data within HTML pages.
  6. Support for installation on a shared file system.
  7. Setup removes previous techexplorer installation.
  8. Fixed a problem which caused a X Window warning message when context menus are used.
  9. Fixed a problem which caused a X Window warning message when jumping to a document label that resides near the end of the document.
  10. Scrolling using the incremental arrow now scrolls the document one line at a time.
  11. Added support for visual feedback in the form of a wait cursor during compute intensive compose and draw phases.

Version 1.9 for the IBM eNetwork Communications Suite (Spring, 1998)

Microsoft Windows 95 and Windows NT

  1. Many internal performance improvements.
  2. Fixed image problem when using Internet Explorer and documents from web sites.
  3. Decreased the relative sizes of the fonts bigger than the normal size.
  4. Can now handle %20 in URLs.
  5. Added more multimedia support via \includeaudio and \includevideo.

Version 2.0 PR 2 (7 November, 1997)

Common

  1. We've added support for a subset of the Mathematical Markup Language being devised by the World Wide Web Consortium Math Working Group. The current support in techexplorer is restricted to the presentation subset of the draft plus some updates from the forthcoming draft. Support in this version should be considered experimental and will be updated to be in compliance with the next draft from the working group when it becomes available.
  2. We now support frames for \docLink. The syntax is

    3.         \docLink[ frame ]{ documentFileName}[ label ]{ textToDisplay }
    where frame is the name of the frame as defined in an HTML page. For example, 
    <FRAMESET COLS="250,*">
<FRAME MARGINWIDTH="15" SRC="toc.tex" NAME="toc">
<FRAME MARGINWIDTH="15" SRC="first.tex" NAME="first">
</FRAMESET>
    defines the two frames toc and first. An example usage in toc.tex might be

    Click \docLink[first]{first.tex}{here} to jump to the first chapter.

  3. We now support fully formatted text in pop-up windows such as those produced by \footnote and \popupLink. A current restriction is that links that require a URL do not work from within these pop-up windows.
  4. AMS-LaTeX-related changes:
  5. Added basic support for \mathbin, \mathclose, \mathopen, \mathord, \mathrel.
  6. Added no-op support for the NFSS commands \fontencoding, \fontfamily, \fontseries, \fontshape, and \fontsize.
  7. Fixed parsing for \left and \right so that decimal numbers following these control sequences are handled properly. For example, \left.6 is now parsed as \left. 6 rather than as \left .6.
  8. Whitespace is now correctly always removed after macro expansion in math mode.
  9. Added a document properties menu item to the document context menu.
  10. Improved vertical placement of bars in \underline and \overline
  11. Added accents: \^, \=, \., \b
  12. Added support for the inverted question mark (?`) and inverted exclamation point (!`) forms.
  13. Fixed the placement of subscripts on expressions of large depth.

Microsoft Windows 95 and Windows NT

  1. When you change the standard background color in the Colors property page, the change is reflected immediately when you click the OK or Apply buttons.
  2. Added support for the math fonts that ship with the MathType product from Design Science.
  3. We now do a complete job of translating %7C in URLs for a local file to '|'. These characters usually appear in URLs in directory listings.
  4. Control sequences that require a URL (such as \includegraphics) now accept Windows-style drive:path syntax.
  5. We rewrote the installation script to ease installation under Microsoft Internet Explorer and to allow for future additional items.

UNIX

  1. IBM AIX 4.1 version of techexplorer.
  2. Improved scrolling performance.
  3. Added the following property pages: Math Auto Color, Colors, Fonts, Roman Fonts, and Font Path.
  4. Added a techexplorer resource database.
  5. We now check for font availability before adding techexplorer's font path information to the X Window System.
  6. Fixed various text color related problems.
  7. Jumping to a label in the middle of a document now positions the display at the correct location.
  8. Embedded techexplorer windows in HTML files no longer require an initial scroll to become visible.

Version 2.0 PR 1 (2 September, 1997)

  1. Solaris 2.5 version of techexplorer in addition to versions for Windows 95 and Windows NT! More UNIX versions to come!
  2. Much internal reorganization for UNIX versions of techexplorer.
  3. Greatly improved parsing error reporting.
  4. Added support for \sc and \textsc (small caps).
  5. Fixed double drawing of screen when you jump to a label in the middle of a document.
  6. Now allow use of \fill with \hspace, \vspace, and cousins.
  7. Added support for \backgroundimage: \backgroundimage{imageFileUrl} uses the image located at imageFileUrl to tile the window background.
  8. Added \statusLineAction. \statusLineAction{statusLineText}{displayText} shows displayText on the screen and shows statusLineText in the status line when the mouse passes over displayText.
  9. Improved status line messages for links.
  10. Changed \cite to not be in italics in an italic environment.
  11. Verbatim now works better in list environments and other environments which change the left margin.
  12. Improved the status line message for the various link types that produce dialog boxes.
  13. \docLink now supports an optional first argument for a frame name (but it is not used yet).
  14. Made the optional argument to \item and the arguments to \tilde,\^ and \_ implicit groups.
  15. Added basic parsing and display support for \axiomLink (but it is not functional in linking to AXIOM).
  16. Tabular environments inside math mode now have contents in horizontal mode.
  17. Fixed mishandling of \end{verbatim} when it appears after the beginning of a line.
  18. Fixed math modes so that they are not affected by a containing \lowercase or \uppercase.
  19. Fixed problem on Windows NT whereby spaces caused extra vertical space below a line.
  20. Fixed problem with macro definitions with arguments inside \iftechexplorer blocks.
  21. Fixed problem with non-braced macro arguments whereby something like \foo12 would put 12 in the first argument to \foo rather than just the 1.
  22. \newif\iftechexplorer incorrectly started an \if block.

Version 1.2 (3 February, 1997)

  1. Fixed \docLink to not open a new copy of the current document if that is the link target.
  2. Fixed vertical alignment of default minipage environment format.
  3. Added additional check to make sure you can see the full line when jump to a label in the middle of a document.
  4. Added symbol mappings for \thorn, \Thorn, and \THORN.

Version 1.2 Beta 6 (17 January, 1997)

  1. Added \thinspace, \negthinspace, and \fcolorbox.
  2. Added no-op handling for \newblock, \@, \newif, \techexplorertrue, and \techexplorer false.
  3. Now support the application/x-latex MIME types along with the *.latex and *.ltx file extensions.
  4. We added *.bbl as a handled file extension within the application/x-tex MIME type. This may require an update to your web server MIME type table.
  5. We now support '%7C' as a substitute for the ':' or '|' in local file names or URLs. This was done because Netscape sometimes inserts these.
  6. We fixed a problem that caused a crash when the user tried to display the options pages and an older version of the Windows 95 COMCTL32.DLL was on the user's machine.

Version 1.2 Beta 5 (23 December, 1996)

  1. Added the tabbing and minipage environments.
  2. Added support for \newcommand and friends where the macro name is not contained in braces (e.g., \newcommand\foo{...}).
  3. Control characters can now be used as names in macro definitions.
  4. Corrected parsing of "$$" when in math mode, so that $a$$<$$b$ is now parsed as 3 non-display math items.
  5. Improved relative sizing of display vs. text style, particularly in fractions made by \over and \frac.

Version 1.2 Beta 4 (12 December, 1996)

  1. The center, flushleft, and flushright environments are now properly implemented in terms of paragraphs and added \centering, \raggedleft, and \raggedright.
  2. Scripts are now handled corectly for \underbrace and \overbrace.
  3. Added bitmaps for the following characters that were missing from the basic font sets: \asymp, \coprod, \flat, \frown, \models, \smile.
  4. Added symbol mappings for \land and \lor.
  5. Added \v and \check and handle \i as "i" and \j as "j".
  6. Fixed the vertical alignment of superscript expressions with empty bodies, e.g., $^1$.
  7. Fixed a bug in drawing \text.
  8. Fixed a bug regarding copying the optional args for images.
  9. Fixed a bug whereby the "missing image" bitmap was not being displayed for local files missing for the plug-in.
  10. Fixed a bug whereby images were not immediately displayed under Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Version 1.2 Beta 3 (14 November, 1996)

  1. Located and fixed major bug related to resource bitmaps and 16 bit color that caused Netscape to crash.
  2. Added support for \binom, \displaylines, \endgraf, \line, \llap, \ne, \operatorname, \shadowbox, \text, \raisebox, and \rlap.
  3. Added support for \iftechexplorer, \ifmmode, \iftrue, and \iffalse.
  4. Added \tfrac, \dfrac. These and \frac now support the optional line thickness.
  5. Added \mod, \pod, and improved the formatting of \pmod.
  6. Added \noalign and \nocorr as no-ops.
  7. Fixed the display of \choose.
  8. Added \zig (which is a horizontally-reflected \zag).
  9. Added support for \usecounter with enumi, enumii, enumiii, enumiv.
  10. Added \overbracket and \underbracket. Temporarily set \overbrace and \underbrace equal to them, respectively.
  11. We now draw large '<' and '>' used as delimiters (they look much better).
  12. Fixed white space around '/' and \backslash in math mode.
  13. Fixed symbol mapping for \imath and the Monotype math fonts.
  14. Added support in font set mappings for the AMS Greek and Hebrew characters \digamma, \varkappa, \beth, \daleth, and \gimel, where available.
  15. Added bitmaps for the following characters that were missing from the basic font sets: \bigtriangleup, \bigtriangledown, \doteq, \gg, \hookleftarrow, \imath, \leadsto, \lhd, \ll, \longmapsto, \leftharpoondown, \leftharpoonup, \rhd, \rightharpoondown, \rightharpoonup, \rightleftharpoons, \triangleleft, and \triangleright.
  16. Fixed a bug in context menus whereby the 40th entry was ignored.
  17. Added basic support for the slide environment (old-style with one argument).
  18. Now display a button indicating that we are waiting for files to arrive.
  19. Added option (under "Miscellaneous") for showing parsing errors.
  20. Implemented \to to be the same as \rightarrow except when used with \overset and \underset.
  21. Added information in the read.me file about fonts and symbols. Also added change history.

Version 1.2 Beta 1 (19 September, 1996)

  1. Made \lowercase, \overline, \underline, and \uppercase implicit grouping operators.
  2. Added support for GIF, JPG, and PCX image formats.
  3. Implemented inline TeX markup within HTML EMBED tags for Netscape 3.0 compatible browsers.
  4. Fixed bugs in URL merge code regarding "../.." and "mailto".
  5. Improved formatting around 'f' and 'p' in math mode.
  6. Fixed long-standing bug with \Huge causing GPF.

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