Well, some time has been passed since the last beta and lots of things
have changed again. The highlights:
  - updated prerelease of web2c-7.5.3
  - stable pdfeTeX, Version 3.141592-1.20b-2.1
  - stable xdvik-22.82
  - dvipng added (has required to add gd library as well)
  - texinfo 4.7
  - new newhelpindex.html by Joao Palhoto Matos

I'd be happy to get any feedback (not only about problems/bugs),
especially since lots of web2c internaly have changed (e.g. regarding 8bit
clean \write) and a lot of new code was added (gd library and dvipng).
So, if you can compile+run this successfully, please let me know some
details about your platform (hardware, os, compiler etc.).

Files (to appear soon):
  ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/systems/unix/teTeX-beta/tetex-src-beta-2.96.2.20040510.tar.gz
  ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/systems/unix/teTeX-beta/tetex-texmf-beta-2.96.2.20040510.tar.gz
  ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/systems/unix/teTeX-beta/tetex-texmfsrc-beta-2.96.2.20040510.tar.gz
or
  ftp://ftp.dante.de/tex-archive/systems/unix/teTeX-beta/tetex-src-beta-2.96.2.20040510.tar.gz
  ftp://ftp.dante.de/tex-archive/systems/unix/teTeX-beta/tetex-texmf-beta-2.96.2.20040510.tar.gz
  ftp://ftp.dante.de/tex-archive/systems/unix/teTeX-beta/tetex-texmfsrc-beta-2.96.2.20040510.tar.gz

Changes in the src area:
        * pdfeTeX, Version 3.141592-1.20b-2.1
        * top-level Makefile: lo longer strip any binary
        * A huge change, to bring the teTeX source in sync with Olaf's
          working sources for web2c.  These changes implement:
          - ini* and vir* links are no longer created
          - xord/xchr/xprn are always dumped
          - 8bits option
          - pool_name and engine_name parametrization of mf and mp
          - halt-on-error option
          - setting $engine in the environment
          - all formats have .fmt extension
          - quoted filenames so filenames with spaces can work
        * larger INBUFSIZE in afm2tfm.c 
        * updates in fmtutil for Olaf's changes
        * minor fix in fmtutil
        * fix bug in usage string of makeindex
        * add dvipng and the gd library
        * update to xdvik-22.82
        * major update: merge web2c-7.5.3 (prerelease) from Olaf;
          includes switch to new tex.web
        * bugfix in updmap manpage
        * update texinfo.tex
        * sync dvipsk with TeX Live
        * added README.texdoctk (old version, needs updating)
        * update to texinfo 4.7
        * bugfix for "pdftex scripts" not being installed
        * pslatex improved
        * add mode dpdfezzz (8000dpi) to mktexpk for -Ppdf
        * make aleph the default engine for lambda (the LaTeX team has
          made a request for e-TeX based engines)
        * texk/tetex/texdoctk.man fixes (by Eric S. Raymond)
        * cygwin related fix in texconfig (for dialog)
        * add manpage for kpsewhere (thanks, Frank!)
        * clean up texk/tetex/Makefile for manpage symlinks (initex,
          virtex etc. are no longer installed, so we don't need manpages
          for this).
        * fix location for language.def in texconfig
        * texconfig: texmf-dist split requires different has_latex
          implementation
        * texconfig: now really use TEXMFLOCAL and not LOCALTEXMF.
        * get rid of MakeTeXPK (mktexpk is still there)

Changes in the texmf area:
        * slightly improve comments in dvips' config.ps
        * newhelpindex.html by Joao Palhoto Matos
        * add package preview (from preview-latex) and ps4pdf
        * add enctex tables + documenation (from
          ftp://math.feld.cvut.cz/pub/olsak/enctex/enctex.tar.gz)
        * update context (to version 2004.4.9); fixes a very important
          bug (latex/3657) and now adops to TDS rearrangements (for
          texmf/scripts)
        * add definitions for a0, a1 and a2 to dvips' config.ps
        * add type1 version of doublestroke fonts
        * update texinfo.tex, footmisc, Catalogue, wasychr.mf, frhyph.tex
        * update chapterbib.sty, fontinstallationguide.pdf, l2tabuen,
          stmaryrd, ccaption, hyphenat, layouts, supertabular
        * updates in babel (dutch+frenchb)
        * update mfpic, footmisc
        * update fontname map files
        * add alias for ec.enc
        * update caption2
        * rm xdvi/XDvi (installed by "make install")
        * update texdoctk database
        * add Estonian hyphenation patterns (eehyph.tex), license: lppl
        * update lm fonts (ver. 0.92)
        * update url.sty, uk-tex-faq, lshort
        * update doc/pdftex/base/pdftex-syntax.txt
        * update modes.mf
        * remove elatex.ini
        * rewrite the code in .ini files to work with non-pdftex based
          engines
        * add contnav.map
        * add natural.tcx
        * update texinfo.tex

Happy testing + have fun!

Thomas