summaryrefslogtreecommitdiff
path: root/info/ltx3pub/l3d004.txt
blob: e83a56d9e4b3e1a3684d185267a6ec38b5e6ddec (plain)
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
362
363
364
365
366
367
368
369
370
371
372
373
374
375
376
377
378
379
380
381
382
383
384
385
386
387
388
389
390
391
392
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417
418
419
420
421
422
423
424
425
426
427
428
429
430
431
432
433
434
435
436
437
438
439
440
441
442
443
444
445
446
447
448
449
450
451
452
453
454
455
456
457
458
459
460
461
462
463
464
465
466
467
468
469
470
471
472
473
474
475
476
477
478
479
480
481
482
483
484
485
486
487
488
489
490
491
492
493
494
495
496
497
498
499
500
501
502
503
504
505
506
507
508
509
510
511
512
513
514
515
516
517
518
519
520
521
522
523
524
525
526
527
528
529
530
531
532
533
534
535
536
537
538
539
540
541
542
543
544
545
546
547
548
549
550
551
552
553
554
555
556
557
558
559
560
561
562
563
564
565
566
567
568
569
570
571
572
573
574
575
576
577
578
579
580
581
582
583
584
585
586
587
588
589
590
591
592
593
594
595
596
597
598
599
600
601
602
603
604
605
606
607
608
609
610
611
612
613
614
615
616
617
618
619
620
621
622
623
624
625
626
627
628
629
630
631
632
633
634
635
636
637
638
639
640
641
642
643
644
645
646
647
648
649
650
651
652
653
654
655
656
657
658
659
660
661
662
663
664
665
666
667
668
669
670
671
672
673
674
675
676
677
678
679
680
681
682
683
684
685
686
687
688
689
690
691
692
693
694
695
696
697
698
699
700
701
702
703
704
705
706
707
708
709
710
711
712
713
714
715
716
717
718
719
720
721
722
723
724
725
726
727
728
729
730
731
732
733
734
735
736
737
738
739
740
741
742
743
744
745
746
747
748
749
750
751
752
753
754
755
756
757
758
759
760
761
762
763
764
765
766
767
768
769
770
771
772
773
774
775
776
777
778
779
780
781
782
783
784
785
786
787
788
789
790
791
792
793
794
795
796
797
798
799
800
801
802
803
804
805
806
807
808
809
810
811
812
813
814
815
816
817
818
819
820
821
822
823
824
825
826
827
828
829
830
831
832
833
834
835
836
837
838
839
840
841
842
843
844
845
846
847
848
849
850
851
852
853
854
855
856
857
858
859
860
861
862
863
864
865
866
867
868
869
870
871
872
873
874
875
876
877
878
879
880
881
882
883
884
885
886
887
888
889
890
891
892
893
894
895
896
897
898
899
900
901
902
    ====================================================================
     @LaTeX3-article{ LaTeX3-L3-004-txt,
     filename        = "l3d004.txt",
     archived        = "ctan:/tex-archive/info/ltx3pub/",
     author          = "Frank Mittelbach and Chris Rowley",
     doc-group       = "Project core team",
     title           = "The {\LaTeX3} Project; Report 1991--92",
     version         = "1.00",
     date            = "01 April 1993",
     time            = "13:37:20 GMT",
     status          = "public, official",
     abstract        = "This report describes the current
                        activities of the \LaTeX3 project.
                        After a short project overview, the
                        major events of 1991 and 1992 are
                        described. Finally the project plan for
                        1993 is presented.
                        ",
     keywords        = "",
     project-address = "LaTeX3 Project            \\
                        c/o Dr. Chris Rowley      \\
                        The Open University       \\
                        Parsifal College          \\
                        Finchley Road             \\
                        London NW3 7BG, England, UK",
     project-tel     = "+44 171 794 0575",
     project-FAX     = "+44 171 433 6196",
     project-email   = "LTX3-Mgr@SHSU.edu",
     copyright       = "Copyright (C) 1993 LaTeX3 Project
                        and Frank Mittelbach and Chris Rowley.
                        All rights reserved.

                        Permission is granted to make and distribute
                        verbatim copies of this publication or of
                        coherent parts from this publication provided
                        this copyright notice and this permission
                        notice are preserved on all copies.

                        Permission is granted to copy and distribute
                        translations of this publication or of
                        individual items from this publication into
                        another language provided that the translation
                        is approved by the original copyright holders.

                        No other permissions to copy or distribute this
                        publication in any form are granted and in
                        particular no permission to copy parts of it
                        in such a way as to materially change its
                        meaning.",
     generalinfo     = "To subscribe to the LaTeX3 discussion list:

                         Send mail to listserv@vm.urz.uni-heidelberg.de
                         with the following line as the body of the
                         message (substituting your own name):

                           subscribe LaTeX-L First-name Surname

                        To find out about volunteer work:

                         look at the document vol-task.tex which can
                         be obtained electronically, see below.

                        To retrieve project publications electronically:

                         Project publications are available for
                         retrieval by anonymous ftp from ctan hosts:
                             ftp.tex.ac.uk
                             ftp.dante.de
                             ftp.shsu.edu
                         in the directory /tex-archive/info/ltx3pub.

                         The file ltx3pub.bib in that directory gives
                         full bibliographical information including
                         abstracts in BibTeX format.  A brief history
                         of the project and a description of its aims
                         is contained in l3d001.tex.

                        If you only have access to email, and not ftp
                         You may use the ftpmail service.
                         Send a message just containg the word
                             help
                         to ftpmail@ftp.shsu.edu
                         for more information about this service.

                        For offers of financial contributions or
                         contributions of computing equipment or
                         software, contact the project at the above
                         address, or the TeX Users Group.

                        For offers of technical assistance, contact the
                         project at the above address.

                        For technical enquiries and suggestions, send
                         e-mail to the latex-l list or contact the
                         project at the above address.",
     checksum        = "30097 902 5006 49192",
     docstring       = "The checksum field above contains a CRC-16
                        checksum as the first value, followed by the
                        equivalent of the standard UNIX wc (word
                        count) utility output of lines, words, and
                        characters.  This is produced by Robert
                        Solovay's checksum utility.",
     }
    ====================================================================




                    The LaTeX3 Project             (C)1993  Frank Mittelbach
                                                                Chris Rowley
                    Report 1991--92



          Abstract  This report describes the current activities of the
                    LaTeX3 project. After a short project overview, the
                    major events of 1991 and 1992 are described. Finally the
                    project plan for 1993 is presented.


  Project overview  The aim of this project is the development of a new
                    version of LaTeX with the following enhancements.

                      * It provides an enhanced user-interface, facilitating
                        the expression of a large range of typesetting
                        requirements from fields both within and outside the
                        natural sciences. This includes the requirements of
                        technical documentation (offset layout, change bars,
                        etc.) as well as requirements from humanities
                        (critical text editions, etc.), many of which are
                        not supported by the current LaTeX.
                      * It provides a more robust user-interface. For
                        example, restrictions on the nesting of commands
                        will be removed; error handling will be improved.
                      * It provides a syntax that allows (semi-)automatic
                        translation from popular SGML DTD's into provided
                        LaTeX document style options. The new syntax will
                        include, for example, attribute and short reference
                        concepts that can be mapped directly into
                        corresponding SGML features.
                      * It provides a style-designer interface that allows
                        easy specification of a wide variety of layouts.
                        This includes, for example, access to arbitrary font
                        families.
                      * The style-design language should be as natural as
                        possible. It will be based on a hierarchical
                        collection of generic formatting functions, so that
                        layouts can be specified by parameters without
                        involving difficult TeX coding.
                      * The new interfaces will be described in detail, with
                        carefully chosen examples, making the learning time

                                                              LaTeX3 Project
                                                              ---------------
                        for new users (both designers and authors) as short
                        as possible.

                    To achieve this aim it was necessary to review large
                    parts of the user-interface and to design a complete new
                    language for style-design.

                    One result of this work was to show the necessity of
                    completely rewriting the kernel of the current LaTeX.
                    Therefore the project is divided into six partly
                    overlapping phases.


                    Phase 1: Review and redesign of the user-interface.  The
                    requirements imposed on a typesetting language by
                    various applications are analysed. This includes the
                    proposed translation from popular DTD's into the
                    language of the LaTeX user-interface.


                    Phase 2: Prototype implementation of new concepts.  The
                    new concepts developed in phase one are implemented and
                    tested. The tests should not only prove that the
                    concepts are implementable within TeX but also test the
                    functionality of the concepts. Larger real-life
                    applications from different fields will show to what
                    extent the new concepts are suitable and might lead to
                    some refinements in the design of the user-interface.


                    Phase 3: Design of a designer-interface.  This phase is
                    more or less independent of the first two phases. The
                    current LaTeX is considered unsatisfactory since it
                    forces the designer to become deeply involved with TeX's
                    algorithmic philosophies and these are likely to be
                    unfamiliar to him. An analysis will be made of the
                    extent to which it is possible to support a
                    layout-description language that is natural for a
                    designer.


                    Phase 4: Prototype implementation of the designer
                    interface.  This is similar to phase two. The concepts
                    resulting from phase three are implemented in prototype
                    versions which are used to test the acceptance of the

                                                                           2

                                                              LaTeX3 Project
                                                              ---------------
                    new designer-interface. In this area implementation
                    details are relatively uncritical, whereas the
                    development of the interface might pose difficult
                    questions since there is no previous research in this
                    area.


                    Phase 5: Re-implementation of the LaTeX kernel.  The
                    results from phases two and four are combined and a
                    system kernel that supports both interfaces is
                    implemented. At this point beta-testing at selected
                    sites is started.


                    Phase 6: Documentation.  While internal documentation is
                    an integral part of every phase, the main work of phase
                    six (manuals and conversion) is devoted to the writing
                    of informative manuals covering both the user- and
                    designer-interface.


    Milestones '91  Shortly after the start of the project three important
                    events took place: a workshop with professionals from
                    the publishing industry in Dedham, followed by working
                    week at the American mathematical Society (AMS) in
                    Providence and later on a meeting with Professor Donald
                    Knuth in Stockholm.

                    In the last quarter of 1991 substantial effort was put
                    into the development of an internal LaTeX3 programming
                    language. A prototype kernel, written in a first
                    approximation to the final language, formatted its own
                    documentation (a 120 page document) for the first time
                    in December.


          Workshop  After the annual meeting of the TeX Users Group in
            Dedham  Dedham (July 91) a two-day workshop was held to discuss
                    design questions for LaTeX3 with TeX experts,
                    compositors and other professionals from the publishing
                    industry. In this workshop (lead by Chris Rowley and
                    Frank Mittelbach) questions of page layout
                    specifications and user interface design were discussed.
                    It was based on material gathered and collated by David
                    Rhead from previous electronic mail discussions about

                                                                           3

                                                              LaTeX3 Project
                                                              ---------------
                    these topics on the LaTeX3 discussion list. This
                    workshop was sponsored by the TeX Users Group.


      Working week  Following this workshop Chris Rowley, Michael Downes
            at AMS  (AMS), and Frank Mittelbach worked for one week at the
                    AMS headquarter at Providence on the specifications for
                    the LaTeX3 error recovery and help system and on some
                    problems related to the efficiency of TeX's approach to
                    mathematical typesetting.


             Paris  At the European TeX conference in Paris (September),
        conference  Chris Rowley and Rainer Schoepf presented an overview of
                    the enhancements to be made to the user interface.


         Stockholm  In November Frank Mittelbach was invited to Stockholm to
                    attend the celebrations for the Honorary Doctorate of
                    Donald Knuth and to give a paper on LaTeX3 at the Nordic
                    TeX conference. The handouts for this paper were later
                    published in TeXline [7] and in [9]; later an enlarged
                    version, co-authored by Chris Rowley, appeared in [14].
                    Whilst in Stockholm Frank took the opportunity to
                    discuss for two days with Donald Knuth design decisions
                    he had taken in the development of the TeX system.


    Milestones '92  The last year has seen substantial progress in three
                    major areas: establishing structures to consolidate
                    support for LaTeX 2.09 (these structures will therefore
                    be well tested before they are needed for LaTeX3);
                    deciding which of the many requirements of a
                    high-quality document formatting system can be
                    implemented using TeX as the formatting engine; research
                    on models of document formatting which support
                    high-quality typography. These last two are, of course,
                    closely related and mutually supportive.


        SGML Users  In February Chris Rowley gave a presentation to the
             Group  inaugural meeting of the UK chapter of the SGML Users
                    Group. This gave an outline of the project and its
                    importance to the formatting of documents encoded in
                    accordance with SGML.

                                                                           4

                                                              LaTeX3 Project
                                                              ---------------
           Hamburg  At the Dante Meeting in Hamburg (March 92) Frank
                    Mittelbach presented an overview of the LaTeX3 project;
                    this was later published as [8]. After the conference a
                    two day workshop with various TeX and LaTeX experts from
                    several European countries was held to discuss questions
                    of the user and style-designer interfaces for LaTeX3.


     Questionnaire  Rolf Lindgren, a student in the field of psychology,
                    volunteered to develop and analyse a questionnaire on
                    the subject of site-specific usage, including additions
                    and changes, of popular extensions to LaTeX 2.09. The
                    project team hopes that this will provide important data
                    about such areas as the current usage of LaTeX, which of
                    these additions are the most important for inclusion in
                    the main system of LaTeX3, etc.

                    A first draft of the questionnaire was handed out to the
                    participants at the Hamburg meeting and Rolf Lindgren
                    used the results of this to write a preliminary
                    report [5] and also to redesign the questionnaire
                    itself. The final questionnaire will be sent out to a
                    representative sample of sites in 1993.


          Lausanne  At the Electronic Publishing Conference EP92 in
        conference  Lausanne, Chris Rowley and Frank Mittelbach gave a paper
                    about potential problems when trying to produce high
                    quality output using automated document typesetting
                    systems [18]. The results presented in this paper were
                    influenced by their work on the LaTeX3 system. On the
                    other hand, this basic research into models for document
                    formatting has direct benefits for the LaTeX3 project
                    since it leads to the development of useful new concepts
                    and methods.


              CERN  Frank Mittelbach and Chris Rowley were also invited to
                    CERN to give a talk about the LaTeX3 system and to
                    discuss problems encountered in the production of
                    high-quality output from SGML sources. Addressing such
                    problems is a major goal of the LaTeX3 project.




                                                                           5

                                                              LaTeX3 Project
                                                              ---------------
             Mainz  At the end of April Frank Mittelbach invited the core
          workshop  development team for LaTeX3 to an 11 day workshop in
                    Mainz to discuss data structures for the kernel and for
                    the style designer language. This workshop was made
                    possible through support from the Zentrum fuer
                    Datenverarbeitung der Universitaet Mainz (providing
                    working facilities), the AMS (facilitating Michael
                    Downes attendance), and DANTE, the German TeX Users
                    Group (help with other expenses).

                    The main results of this workshop were summarized in an
                    internal project paper by Denys Duchier [2]; they are
                    mainly of a somewhat theoretical nature, e.g.,
                    discussions about what algorithms to use, the nature of
                    internal interfaces, etc. Some of them are now
                    implemented in prototypes, others are scheduled for
                    further work during 1993.


     Paris meeting  In May GUTenberg (the French TeX Users Group) invited
                    Rainer Schoepf and Frank Mittelbach to a one day meeting
                    in Paris to discuss various aspects of the LaTeX3
                    project. They presented an overview of the user
                    interface, a summary of the structure of the LaTeX3
                    system, the layout specification interface and the
                    coding of tabular material. They also discussed details
                    of the LaTeX3 programmer's environment, the short
                    reference mechanism, the float mechanism, the mark
                    mechanism, the I/O interface and the error recovery
                    mechanism. GUTenberg also made a much appreciated
                    contribution to the project's expenses.

                    Later in the year the possibility of a collaboration
                    between the LaTeX3 project, the University of Mainz and
                    one or more French institutes was discussed. This
                    collaboration is now becoming concrete and it is planned
                    that, in the second half of 1993, French students of
                    informatique will spend periods of three or more months
                    in Mainz and assist Frank Mittelbach in the development
                    of the LaTeX3 system.


             Macro  Together with David Carlisle, Frank Mittelbach developed
        validation  a system for automatic validation of changes in large
            system  macro packages [13, 1]. The purpose of this system is to

                                                                           6

                                                              LaTeX3 Project
                                                              ---------------
                    detect errors introduced by incorrect bug fixes to the
                    macro packages before such changes are distributed. The
                    quality of the automated checking system depends largely
                    on the number of test files in it. It was first tested
                    with the New Font Selection Scheme (NFSS) package [22]
                    where it was successful in preventing some mistakes from
                    getting into the distributed version.

                    After this successful test a group of volunteers under
                    the direction of Daniel Flipo started to write test
                    files for the LaTeX 2.09 base system; these will improve
                    the quality of its maintenance. It is intended that they
                    will also be used as a test base for the user interface
                    of the LaTeX3 system.


               New  A considerable amount of time during 1992 was devoted to
        LaTeX 2.09  reorganizing the distribution and support of the styles
             style  which have been developed by Rainer Schoepf and Frank
     distributions  Mittelbach for the LaTeX 2.09 release. A lot of work was
                    done on the code-documentation package, consisting of
                    the program docstrip and the style doc. The program
                    docstrip was reimplemented and enhanced by Johannes
                    Braams, Denys Duchier and Frank Mittelbach. The
                    documentation of the doc style was brought up-to-date by
                    David Love [11]. The array package, which contains an
                    enhanced reimplementation of the array and tabular
                    environments of LaTeX 2.09, was improved by the addition
                    of code written by David Carlisle [12]. Frank Mittelbach
                    rewrote parts of the multicol package to support \marks
                    for use in running headings and to allow for up to ten
                    columns [10]. These packages, and all others, have been
                    reorganized to make use of the extra features of the new
                    docstrip program; this will ensure their smooth and easy
                    installation at every site having a TeX installation.


        LaTeX 2.09  At the same time, a new system for maintaining the
       maintenance  LaTeX 2.09 base system was installed at Mainz by Rainer
                    Schoe pf and the whole base system was transferred to
                    this site so that it can be maintained by him and Frank
                    Mittelbach.




                                                                           7

                                                              LaTeX3 Project
                                                              ---------------
      BibTeX reim-  One of the important programs in the LaTeX system is
      plementation  BibTeX, a system for managing bibliographical material
                    and producing bibliographies in documents. At the TeX
                    Users Group Conference in Cork (1990) Reinhard
                    Wonneberger and Frank Mittelbach presented a paper
                    discussing several proposals for a reimplementation of
                    this program [24]. During the summer Oren Patashnik, the
                    original author of BibTeX, was contacted to discuss with
                    him a reimplementation of BibTeX. He agreed to
                    reimplement this program so that it will interface
                    smoothly with the new LaTeX system.

                    These reimplementation proposals are now being discussed
                    by a small group of experts and work is under way to
                    finalize the user interface for providing
                    bibliographical information in the LaTeX3 system; this
                    will support the many distinct citation conventions
                    (author-date system, etc.) that are in common use. In
                    addition to providing the LaTeX3 system with a
                    bibliographical system which is also freely available,
                    it is planned to provide, wherever possible, interfaces
                    linking LaTeX3 with commercially available bibliographic
                    software. This will, for example, enable users to
                    integrate into LaTeX documents information extracted
                    from large bibliographic databases. Much of the work in
                    this area is being carried out by David Rhead.


        TUG annual  At the annual meeting of the TeX Users Group in
           meeting  Portland, Oregon, Chris Rowley gave a talk which
                    surveyed the current status of the LaTeX3 project [23]
                    and ran a mini-workshop at which some of the more
                    technical aspects were discussed. This meeting was
                    important in establishing the project as being of
                    central importance to the community of TeX users and
                    developers and to the future of TeX as a formatter for
                    high quality typographic output.


         Volunteer  One of the results of the meeting of the core
             tasks  development team in Mainz was to single out tasks that
                    could be taken up by volunteers whose work could be to a
                    large extent independent of the core team. During the
                    summer, Michael Downes and Frank Mittelbach prepared a
                    task list and working procedures for such volunteers.

                                                                           8

                                                              LaTeX3 Project
                                                              ---------------
                    George Greenwade from the Sam Houston State University
                    kindly agreed to serve as a task list manager; the
                    Volunteer Task List was therefore presented to the
                    public at the Prague conference in
                    September [15, 17, 16].


            Prague  In September the European TeX conference took place in
        conference  Prague. Chris Rowley and Frank Mittelbach reported on
                    the status of the LaTeX3 project and described some
                    aspects of the formatting model which it will implement.
                    In a separate presentation they described some results
                    of their research on more general models for document
                    formatting.


            Series  During the conference in Prague Frank Mittelbach
         agreement  concluded with Peter Gordon (Addison-Wesley) publication
                    agreements concerning the documentation of the LaTeX3
                    system and related books. They will appear in a book
                    series with the tentative title `Tools and Techniques
                    for Computer Typesetting' under the editorial
                    supervision of Frank Mittelbach and with the
                    participation of Leslie Lamport and other key players in
                    the LaTeX3 project.


       BCS meeting  In September Chris Rowley was invited to give a talk
                    about LaTeX3 at a meeting on Structured Documentation
                    organised by the British Computer Society EP Specialist
                    Group in Nottingham. This contained a brief history and
                    outline of the project, followed by some discussion of
                    the requirements of the designer's interface.


      Working week  Leslie Lamport visited Frank Mittelbach for five days in
          in Mainz  October to discuss the work in progress. They covered
                    many aspects of the user interface including the
                    important mechanism for attaching attributes to commands
                    and environments.






                                                                           9

                                                              LaTeX3 Project
                                                              ---------------
        Washington  During the Lausanne Conference Chris Rowley and Frank
        conference  Mittelbach had been invited to present further results
                    of their research on document formatting models at an
                    international `Workshop on Principles of Document
                    Processing' in Washington DC, organized by the Xerox
                    Webster Research Center, Cornell University and Syracuse
                    University. This talk, which has now been written up for
                    publication, led to many fruitful discussions. These
                    covered many aspects of the relationship between their
                    approach and that of other work on models of document
                    processing.

                    The workshop also showed the need to investigate the
                    relationship between two types of model: those similar
                    to that of Mittelbach/Rowley, which are oriented towards
                    data structures and operations that can be effectively
                    implemented, and those of a more general nature, which
                    describe a large range of document processing
                    applications in terms of formal structures such as
                    attribute grammars and trees.


         Bell-Labs  During their stay in the US they also visited AT&T Bell
                    Laboratories, invited by John Hobby, who worked under
                    Knuth on the TeX project in Stanford. In addition to
                    giving a talk about their research in document
                    formatting models and discussing this with researchers
                    there, they had the opportunity to discuss with Brian
                    Kernighan his recent work on page-makeup by
                    post-processing [4].


          Multiple  As part of the LaTeX3 kernel Frank Mittelbach developed
             marks  prototype code for multiple independent marks. This
                    allows information, such as the first or the last index
                    entry for each column in a multi-column layout, to be
                    recorded for later use in the final page make-up. Due to
                    the limited support for such layout structures in TeX,
                    the current LaTeX only provides a very simple mechanism.


            Bremen  Following the Lausanne conference Frank Mittelbach was
        colloquium  invited to give a colloquium talk on the subject
                    `Computereinsatz in der Typographie: Kann die hohe
                    Qualitaet des Handsatzes durch Computerprogramme

                                                                          10

                                                              LaTeX3 Project
                                                              ---------------
                    erreicht oder uebertroffen werden?' at the Computer
                    Science Institute of the Bremen University. During his
                    two-day visit to Bremen Frank Mittelbach had several
                    fruitful discussions with the research team working with
                    Professor Frieder Nake on research problems in computer
                    controlled typesetting.


            Meppel  In the second half of November Frank Mittelbach was
        conference  invited to give a talk at the meeting of the Netherlands
                    TeX Users Group in Meppel. He spoke about possible
                    directions in research on typesetting problems,
                    discussing tasks which are impossible to achieve using
                    state of the art typesetting systems such as TeX. This
                    talk was based on a paper published in the conference
                    proceedings of TeX90, [6].


        Nordic TeX  The Nordic TeX users group invited a representative of
        conference  the LaTeX3 project to speak at their meeting in
                    Kobenhavn so Chris Rowley presented a brief history of
                    the project and discussed several aspects of the
                    designer interface. He also discussed future
                    collaboration with other research projects in the area
                    of document processing.


          Euromath  Chris Rowley has been exploring the relationships
                    between the LaTeX3 project and the Euromath project.
                    This latter project was started in 1986 and is aimed at
                    the production of an integrated system which provides a
                    homogeneous working environment for mathematicians. It
                    is based on the Grif structure editor, which provides an
                    object oriented system and applications programming
                    interface. Thus LaTeX is their natural, and preferred,
                    choice of application for the production of
                    publishing-quality typeset output.


        alpha-test  In the last quarter of 1992 Frank Mittelbach rewrote the
             NFSS2  NFSS system (New Font Selection Scheme for
                    LaTeX [20, 21]), based on a prototype extension to NFSS
                    written by Mark Purtill in 1991. This reimplementation
                    extends the released version in several ways including
                    encoding support (multiple languages), scalable font

                                                                          11

                                                              LaTeX3 Project
                                                              ---------------
                    support (PostScript fonts) and math font support. In
                    addition Frank Mittelbach wrote new documentation for
                    the package, which will appear as a chapter of [3]. The
                    alpha-testing of the new release was started at the end
                    of December and the official release is planned for
                    summer 1993.


             Error  For error recovery a prototype had already been
      recovery and  implemented early in 1992, as part of the prototype
       help system  kernel for LaTeX3, but the interface to an interactive
                    help system existed only as a specification written
                    during the working week at the AMS in Providence. A
                    first prototype was implemented by Michael Downes in
                    December, so that it is now possible to do small field
                    tests; this implementation is, however, currently only
                    available as a LaTeX 2.09 style file. It is planned to
                    reimplement this in the LaTeX3 programming language
                    during 1993.

    Current status  Phase 1: Review and redesign of the user-interface.
                    There is now enough information about the requirements
                    to be able to produce a testable version of the
                    user-interface in the near future.


                    Phase 2: Prototype implementation of new concepts.  As
                    outlined above, several prototype implementations have
                    been tested during the last year. However, further tests
                    will be necessary once the user-interface, the design
                    language and the internal LaTeX3 programming language
                    are in their final form.


                    Phase 3+4: Design and prototypes of a
                    designer-interface.  The main concepts for the design
                    interface are now developed and some proto-typing has
                    already taken place. Nevertheless, this phase of the
                    project will need considerable additional time as these
                    concepts are new and thus cannot rely on experience
                    already gathered.


                    Phase 5: Re-implementation of the LaTeX kernel.  As
                    mentioned above, a prototype version of the LaTeX3

                                                                          12

                                                              LaTeX3 Project
                                                              ---------------
                    kernel, written in the current version of the LaTeX3
                    programming language, has already been completed.
                    However, as long as the work on phases 3 and 4 is still
                    under way, this forms only an approximation to the final
                    product.


    Plans for 1993  In the first quarter of 1993 the project team plans
                    another workshop in Germany to work on the style design
                    language.

                    The core project team will investigate the possibilities
                    for collaboration with related research and development
                    projects such as Euromath. They will also establish
                    contact with the ISO working group on the Document Style
                    Semantics and Specification Language (DSSSL).

                    The beta-testing of NFSS2 is planned for March up to May
                    and the official release of the system is scheduled for
                    summer 1993.

                    The project team will work on a prototype of the
                    designer-interface. This will lead to testing of this
                    interface by working with designers to discover how
                    easily it enables them to realise practical designs.

                    It is planned that in the summer a French student will
                    come to Mainz for three months, to help with the
                    project's work.


           Finance  There has been a modest but steady flow of contributions
                    into the project fund set up by the TeX Users Group.
                    Many of these come from individual members and they are
                    particularly valued by the project team since, in
                    addition to their financial significance, they represent
                    a very high level of personal commitment to the success
                    of the project amongst the TeX community---much thanks
                    to everyone involved in these fund-raising efforts,
                    especially to Alan Hoenig, Doug Henderson and the TUG
                    office staff.

                    The project's finances will also benefit greatly from
                    the generosity of the authors of the forthcoming book A
                    LaTeX Companion [3] to be published by Addison-Wesley in

                                                                          13

                                                              LaTeX3 Project
                                                              ---------------
                    1993: they are donating 50% of their royalties to the
                    project. This book will describe the contents and use of
                    many of the extensions to LaTeX 2.09 which are now
                    widely available.

                    The following institutions have made substantial
                    contributions to the fund administered by TUG or to the
                    project directly and we are very glad to acknowledge
                    them here with thanks: Addison-Wesley, Blue Sky
                    Research, Dante, GUTenberg, NTG Nederlandstalige TeX
                    Gegruikersgroep, Nordic TeX Users Group, UK TeX Users
                    Group.

                    The following organisations have also assisted the
                    project in various ways, including the provision of
                    books, equipment, software, staff time, etc: AMS,
                    ArborText, ArchaeoInformatica, Aston University, Blue
                    Sky Research, CERN, Digital Equipment Corporation,
                    EDS Electronic Data Systems, Elsevier Science
                    Publishers, Life Science Communications, Manchester
                    University, Open University UK, PCTeX, Royal Institute
                    of Technology Stockholm, Royal Military College of
                    Science, The Royal Society, TCI Research, Southampton
                    University, TeX88, Zentrum fuer Datenverarbeitung der
                    Universitaet Mainz.

                    The project is still in need of financial assistance
                    since demands on the fund are certain to grow
                    substantially when wide-spread testing begins.


        References   [1] David Carlisle and Frank Mittelbach. A test system
                         for LaTeX-2.09. LaTeX3 project paper, June 1992.
                     [2] Denys Duchier. Mainz, May 26--Jun 3 1992. Internal
                         LaTeX3 paper, June 1992.
                     [3] Michel Goossens, Frank Mittelbach and Alexander
                         Samarin. The LaTeX Companion (tentative title).
                         Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts, 1993. to
                         appear.
                     [4] Brian W. Kernighan and Christopher J. Van Wyk. Page
                         makeup by postprocessing text formatter output.
                         Computing Systems, 2(2):103--132, 1989.
                     [5] Rolf Lindgren. Preliminary report on LaTeX style
                         options. Internal LaTeX3 paper, August 1992.


                                                                          14

                                                              LaTeX3 Project
                                                              ---------------
                     [6] Frank Mittelbach. E-TeX: Guidelines to future TeX
                         extensions. In Lincoln K. Durst, editor, 1990
                         Conference Proceedings, pages 337--345, September
                         1990. Published as TUGboat 11#3.
                     [7] Frank Mittelbach. LaTeX2.09 -> LaTeX3. TeXline,
                         (14):15--18, February 1992.
                     [8] Frank Mittelbach. LaTeX3. Die TeXnische Komoedie,
                         4(2):15--22, August 1992.
                     [9] Frank Mittelbach. LaTeX3 project. TeX Gebruikers
                         Group, 92(1):87--90, May 1992.
                    [10] Frank Mittelbach. The multicol package.
                         Distribution of style options that allow
                         multi-column layout with LaTeX, November 1992.
                    [11] Frank Mittelbach, Johannes Braams, David Love and
                         Denys Duchier. The doc package. Distribution of the
                         utilities for the documentation and distribution of
                         TeX macro packages., May 1992.
                    [12] Frank Mittelbach and David Carlisle. The array
                         package. Distribution of style options that extend
                         LaTeX's array and tabular facilities, May 1992.
                    [13] Frank Mittelbach and David Carlisle. The validation
                         package. Distribution of tools for automatic
                         validation of changes in large macro packages, June
                         1992.
                    [14] Frank Mittelbach and Chris Rowley. LaTeX2.09 ->
                         LaTeX3. TUGboat, 13(1):96--101, April 1992.
                    [15] Frank Mittelbach, Chris Rowley and Michael Downes.
                         Volunteer work for the LaTeX3 project. LaTeX3
                         project paper, September 1992.
                    [16] Frank Mittelbach, Chris Rowley, and Michael Downes.
                         Volunteer work for the LaTeX3 project. TUGboat,
                         13(4):510--515, December 1992.
                    [17] Frank Mittelbach, Chris Rowley and Michael J.
                         Downes. Volunteer work for the LaTeX3 project. TeX
                         and TUG NEWS, 1(3):18, November 1992.
                    [18] Frank Mittelbach and Chris A. Rowley. The pursuit
                         of quality---how can automated typesetting achieve
                         the highest standards of craft typography? In
                         C. Vanoirbeek and G. Coray, editors, Electronic
                         Publishing '92, pages 260--273, Cambridge, April
                         1992. Cambridge University Press.
                    [19] Frank Mittelbach and Chris A. Rowley. The pursuit
                         of quality---How can automated typesetting achieve
                         the highest standards of craft typography? MAPS,


                                                                          15

                                                              LaTeX3 Project
                                                              ---------------
                         92(2):50--56, November 1992. Paper already
                         published in Electronic Publishing '92, April 1992,
                         Cambridge University Press, (ISBN 0-521-43277-4);
                         Reprinted with permissions.
                    [20] Frank Mittelbach and Rainer Schoepf. A new font
                         selection scheme for TeX macro packages---the basic
                         macros. TUGboat, 10(2):222--238, July 1989.
                    [21] Frank Mittelbach and Rainer Schoepf. Reprint (with
                         corrections): The new font family selection ---
                         user interface to standard LaTeX. TUGboat,
                         11(2):297--305, June 1990.
                    [22] Frank Mittelbach and Rainer Schoepf. The nfss
                         package release 1. Distribution of a new font
                         selection mechanism for LaTeX, May 1992.
                    [23] Chris Rowley. LaTeX2.09 -> LaTeX3: an update. In
                         Mimi Burbank, editor, 1992 Annual Meeting
                         Proceedings, pages 390--391, October 1992.
                         Published as TUGboat 13#3.
                    [24] Reinhard Wonneberger and Frank Mittelbach. BibTeX
                         reconsidered. In Mary Guenther, editor, TeX 90
                         Conference Proceedings, pages 111--124, March 1991.
                         Published as TUGboat 12#1.
























                                                                          16