# Racket v8.16 draft release notes **URL:** \ **Category:** Internals\ **Tags:** release-management, release\ **Created:** [January 27, 2025, 5:09am UTC](https://racket.discourse.group/t/racket-v8-16-draft-release-notes/3518 "2025-01-27T05:09:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 5
**Author:** ![spdegabrielle](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/racket.discourse.group/spdegabrielle/32/95_2.png) [@spdegabrielle](https://racket.discourse.group/u/spdegabrielle)\ **Post date:** [February 2, 2025, 8:42pm UTC](https://racket.discourse.group/t/racket-v8-16-draft-release-notes/3518/5 "2025-02-02T20:42:23Z")
How about this? * * * - Expanded support for immutable and mutable treelists - The `serialize-structs` module allows the minimization of dependencies by providing only a handful of core forms - The `flbit-field` function allows access to the binary representation of IEEE floating-point numbers. - The top-left search box in the documentation works once more. - The XML reader uses a different library that is 2x-3x faster on inputs with large CDATA blocks, and disables contract checks to obtain a 25% speedup on large documents generally. - The pregexp syntax includes "\X" to match a grapheme cluster, following Perl and PCRE. - The `read-json*` and `write-json*` functions allow customization of the Racket representation of JSON elements, eliminating the need for a separate "translation" pass. - New port I/O functions - A revised representation of pointers improves the performance of foreign function calls. - In anticipation of the fifteenth RacketCon, the `fifteenth` function returns the fifteenth element of a list. - Racket has an improved multi-line convention for error messages. - The `db` library allows `prepare` on virtual statements. - The `student-t` distribution is part of the `math/distributions` library. - Expeditor supports customizing the prompt, using the `prompt` argument to `call-with-expeditor`. - There is a guide to adding internationalization for a new (human) language. - `#lang htdp/asl` incorporates [Graphical Debugger](https://docs.racket-lang.org/drracket/debugger.html#%28part._.Debugger_.Buttons%29) support. - There is lots of new documentation, and many defects repaired! The following people contributed to this release: a11ce, Alex Knauth, Alexander Shopov, Alexis King, Andrew Mauer-Oats, Anthony Carrico, Bert De Ketelaere, Bob Burger, Bogdan Popa, D. Ben Knoble, David Van Horn, Gustavo Massaccesi, halfminami, Hao Zhang, Jacqueline Firth, Jinser Kafka, JJ, John Clements, Jörgen Brandt, Kraskaska, lafirest, Laurent Orseau, lukejianu, Marc Nieper-Wißkirchen, Matthew Flatt, Matthias Felleisen, mehbark, Mike Sperber, Noah Ma, Onorio Catenacci, Oscar Waddell, Pavel Panchekha, payneca, Robby Findler, Sam Phillips, Sam Tobin-Hochstadt, Shu-Hung You, Sorawee Porncharoenwase, Stephen De Gabrielle, Wing Hei Chan, Yi Cao, and ZhangHao. * * * --- _[View the full topic](https://racket.discourse.group/t/racket-v8-16-draft-release-notes/3518)._