[latexrefman] Some notes on LaTeX News

[Pablo González L]

Just a couple of notes to keep in mind and perhaps it is important to
mention at some point:

1. Taken from ltnew 28, April 2018 (texdoc ltnews p38)
UTF-8: the new default input encoding

Actually the only place I found a mention of this was in the example of
4.1 fontenc package
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}  % Optional: encoding of input file

2. Taken from ltnew 28, April 2018 (texdoc ltnews p40)
Integration of remreset and chngcntr packages into the kernel

3. Taken from ltnew 29, December 2018 (texdoc ltnews p41-42)
Fixed \verb* and friends in XeTeX and LuaTEX
The \verb* code now always uses the newly
introduced command \verbvisiblespace to produce
the visible space character and this command will get
appropriate definitions for use with the different engines.

4. Taken from ltnew 30, October 2019 (texdoc ltnews p45)
LaTeX-dev formats now available
(I think this is worth mentioning :D)

5. Taken from ltnew 31, February 2020 (texdoc ltnews p50-52)
Improvements to LaTeX’s font selection mechanism (NFSS)
** Font series defaults per document family
\DeclareFontSeriesDefault[rm]{bf}{sb}
\DeclareFontSeriesDefault[tt]{md}{lc}
in the document preamble would result in \textbf
producing semi-bold (sb) when typesetting in a roman
typeface

** Handling of nested emphasis
\DeclareEmphSequence{\itshape,%
\upshape\scshape,\itshape}
uses italics for the first, small capitals for the second,
and italic small capitals for the third level (provided you
use a font that supports these shapes)

** Providing font family substitutions
\DeclareFontFamilySubstitution{LGR}
{Montserrat-LF}{IBMPlexSans-TLF}
tells LaTeX that if you are typesetting in the sans serif
font Montserrat-LF and the Greek encoding LGR is
asked for, then L A TEX should use IBMPlexSans-TLF to
fulfill the encoding request.

** Providing all text companion symbols by default
This is most noticeable with \oldstylenums which are
now taken from TS1 so that you no longer get 1234 but
1234 when typesetting in sans serif fonts and 1234 when
using typewriter fonts.

6. Taken from ltnew 32, October 2020 (texdoc ltnews p56)
** Support calc in various kernel commands

I think those are the most relevant from the side of a standard user.
I clarify that these are only suggestions in order to keep this
beautiful document updated, it has been my reference guide since ever  :)
The best
Pablo