# What are the new features in TikZ/pgf 3.0?

Since the December 20, 2013, we have new major release of the wonderful TikZ/pgf package: version 3.0.0! 1

Unfortunately, I was not able to find a nice human readable list of changes, that goes to some depth and maybe even provides some examples. This page probably comes closest to it: 2

Therefore, I would like to ask you to point out some of the new features and give examples of their usage! A bounty might be awarded ;-).

1. http://sourceforge.net/projects/pgf/
2. http://sourceforge.net/projects/pgf/files/pgf/version%203.0.0/

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Is this an official release? It hasn't made it to CTAN, yet, and thus is not part of either major TeX distribution. –  cgnieder Jan 10 at 20:30
it is not a major release but a release candidate. –  percusse Jan 14 at 8:11
@cgnieder: It is and CTAN is working on releasing it. Once it's on CTAN it will in the distros. –  Martin Schröder Jan 15 at 11:29
@MartinSchröder It is a month and a half and still not on CTAN. Any time prognosis when this is going to be released? –  Pygmalion Feb 7 at 17:14
–  texenthusiast Feb 27 at 21:25

Some of the new features have already been shown on the site.

I report some examples (in alphabetical order):

### quotes

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Oh, I'm looking forward to pics! –  quinmars Jan 10 at 21:14
The graph drawing library is amazing. Making things so much easier! When will 3.0 reach TeXLive? –  Ingo Jan 11 at 12:08
What? No faded drop shadow? :( –  recluze Jan 15 at 1:43
texdoc tikz brings up the old documentation (v2.1 rather than 3.0), why? –  stalking is prohibited Jan 16 at 13:23
@CodeMocker: make sure to copy the doc directory in your personal tree. I did that way and texdoc is opening correctly the new documentation. –  Claudio Fiandrino Jan 16 at 13:28

With TikZ 3.0, you can use blend modes.

A blend mode specifies how colors mix when you paint on a canvas. Normally, if you paint a red box on a green circle, the red color will completely replace the green circle. However, in some situations you might also wish the red color to somehow "mix" or "blend" with the green circle. We already saw that, using transparency, we can draw something without completely obscuring the background. Blending is a similar operation, only here we mix colors in more complicated ways.

Note: Blending is a rather "advanced" feature of PDF. Most renderers, let alone printers, will have trouble rendering blending correctly.

Below is an example of screen blend mode (there are 16 modes: normal, multiply, screen, overlay, darken, lighten, color dodge, color burn, hard light, soft light, difference, exclusion, hue, saturation, color, luminosity).

\documentclass[tikz]{standalone}
\begin{document}
\tikz [blend group=screen] {
\fill[red!90!black]   ( 90:.6) circle (1);
\fill[green!80!black] (210:.6) circle (1);
\fill[blue!90!black] (330:.6) circle (1);
}
\end{document}

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With TikZ 3.0 arrives math library.

This library defines a simple mathematical language to define simple functions and perform sequences of basic mathematical operations.

Here is a code from the manual (p.629), slightly modified to include function use.

\documentclass[varwidth,border=50]{standalone}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{math}
\tikzmath{
function last(\n){return 360-\n/2;};
function step(\n){return \n/2;};
function testcircle(\a){
real \s; \s = step(\a);
for \k in {0,\a,...,last(\a)}{
% set the color
if \k+\a>270 then { let \c = orange; } else {
if \k+\a>180 then { let \c = blue; } else {
if \k+\a>90 then { let \c = red; } else {
let \c = green;
};
};
};
{ % "print" the path command
\path[fill=\c!50, draw=\c] (\k:0.5cm) -- (\k:1cm) --
(\k+\s:1cm) -- (\k+\s:0.5cm) -- cycle;
};
}; % end for loop
}; % end test circle
}

\begin{document}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\tikzmath{testcircle(20);}
\begin{scope}[scale=2.1]
\tikzmath{testcircle(4);}
\end{scope}
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{document}


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