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diff --git a/Master/texmf-dist/doc/generic/FAQ-en/faq-backgrnd.tex b/Master/texmf-dist/doc/generic/FAQ-en/faq-backgrnd.tex
index c7c17b7b2b7..f5c334ee9fa 100644
--- a/Master/texmf-dist/doc/generic/FAQ-en/faq-backgrnd.tex
+++ b/Master/texmf-dist/doc/generic/FAQ-en/faq-backgrnd.tex
@@ -406,9 +406,9 @@ Actual implementation offers three distinct types of host:
\begin{description}
\item[\emph{Core} archives]Which form a small, tightly-coupled set of
machines, which perform management functions as well as serving
- files, and
+ files;
\item[\emph{Mirror} archives]Which do no more than take regular copies
- of core archives.
+ of core archives, and serve them; and
\item[Archive selector]Which is a meta-service, which routes requests
to an apparently ``local'' mirror (``local'' is determined by an
algorithm that uses your net address to determine where you are, and
@@ -449,39 +449,41 @@ the load on \ctan{} mirrors.
Note that all the download links, given in the web representation of
these \acro{FAQ}s, are set up to use the mirror selector.
-\LastEdit{2013-02-20}
+\LastEdit{2013-05-21}
\Question[Q-catalogue]{The (\acro{CTAN}) catalogue}
Finding stuff on networks was always difficult, but in recent years,
search engines have become amazingly good at digging out unconsidered
trifles from the myriad items of information available on the net.
-
-Sadly, in the \tex{} context, search engines seem to excel in locating
-out-of-date material, while the service users need a means of finding
-relevant material on \acro{CTAN}~--- on the grounds that such material
-is most likely to be up-to-date. The need to find such items, thus
-alleviating tendency to end up with out-of-date \alltex{} material,
-was the motivation for developing a specialised information source:
-the \acro{CTAN} catalogue. The aim is that they contain enough
-relevant information that they will appear early in a search engine's
-evaluation.
-
-The basis of the catalogue is a collection of small
+Confusion is added by the tendency to index the same file at several
+mirror sites.
+
+Sadly, in the \tex{} context, search engines regularly locate
+out-of-date material: their users need a means of finding the relevant
+material on \acro{CTAN}~--- on the grounds that such material is most
+likely to be up-to-date. The need to find up-to-date items, avoiding
+out-of-date \alltex{} material, was the motivation for developing a
+specialised information source: the \acro{CTAN} catalogue. The
+catalogue contains enough information to support most users' needs;
+the ideal is that the catalogue entries should appear early in search
+engine results, but in practice this is not always achieved.
+
+The basis of the catalogue is a collection of small, stylised,
articles; each shows basic information about a package on \acro{CTAN},
-and includes pointers to download address, documentation and related
+and includes pointers to download address, documentation and home page
+if any, and related
packages. Every \acro{CTAN} mirror holds a copy of the catalogue,
-presented as a series of web pages; indexes (both alphabetic and
-category-based) are provided.
+presented as a series of web pages; both alphabetic and category-based
+indexes are provided.
The core \acro{CTAN} sites also offer a simple text search of the
-catalogue. This is a tolerable means of finding a package you need,
-but it is not really a substitute for a good information retrieval
-system: the problem of providing such a system has not yet been solved.
+catalogue; the search could be improved, but manpower to do such
+improvements is lacking.
\begin{ctanrefs}
\item[\nothtml{\rmfamily}The CTAN catalogue]\CTANref{Catalogue}
\end{ctanrefs}
-\LastEdit*{2011-05-19}
+\LastEdit*{2013-05-21}
\Question[Q-triptrap]{How can I be sure it's really \TeX{}?}
@@ -517,58 +519,60 @@ pathways within the program, they don't actually test for any real
world problem.)
\LastEdit{2011-05-28}
-\Question[Q-y2k]{Are \TeX{} and friends Y2K compliant?}
+% \Question[Q-y2k]{Are \TeX{} and friends Y2K compliant?}
-\begin{description}
-\item[Crashing:] None of \TeX{}, \MF{} or \MP{} can themselves crash
- due to any change whatever in the date of any sort.
-
-\item[Timestamps:] In the original sources, a 2-digit year was
- stored as the creation time for format files and that value is
- printed in log-files. These items should not be of general concern,
- since the only use of the date format file is to produce the log
- output, and the log file is designed for human readers only.
+% \begin{description}
+% \item[Crashing:] None of \TeX{}, \MF{} or \MP{} can themselves crash
+% due to any change whatever in the date of any sort.
+
+% \item[Timestamps:] In the original sources, a 2-digit year was
+% stored as the creation time for format files and that value is
+% printed in log-files. These items should not be of general concern,
+% since the only use of the date format file is to produce the log
+% output, and the log file is designed for human readers only.
- Knuth announced in 1998 that implementors would be permitted
- alter this code without fear of being accused of non-compliance.
- Nearly all implementations that are being actively maintained had
- been modified to generate 4-digit years in the format file and the
- log, by the end of 1998. The original sources themselves have now
- been modified so that 4-digit year numbers are stored.
-
-\item[The \csx{year} primitive:] Certification of a \TeX{}
- implementation (see \Qref[question]{trip/trap testing}{Q-triptrap})
- does not require that \csx{year} return a meaningful value (which
- means that \TeX{} can, in principle, be implemented on platforms
- that don't make the value of the clock available to user programs).
- The \emph{\TeX{}book} (see
- \Qref[question]{TeX-related books}{Q-tex-books}) defines \csx{year} as
- ``the current year of our Lord'', which is the only correct meaning
- for \csx{year} for those implementations which can supply a
- meaningful value, which is to say nearly all of them.
-
- In short, \TeX{} implementations should provide a value in \csx{year}
- giving the 4-digit year Anno Domini, or the value 1776 if the
- platform does not support a date function.
-
- Note that if the system itself fails to deliver a correct date to
- \TeX{}, then \csx{year} will of course return an incorrect value.
- \TeX{} cannot be considered Y2K compliant, in this sense, on a
- system that is not itself Y2K compliant.
-
-\item[Macros:] \TeX{} macros can in principle perform calculations on
- the basis of the value of \csx{year}.
- The \Qref*{LaTeX suite}{Q-latex}
- performs such calculations in a small number of places; the
- calculations performed in the current (supported) version of \LaTeX{} are
- known to be Y2K compliant.
-
- Other macros and macro packages should be individually checked.
-
-\item[External software:] Software such as \acro{DVI} translators
- needs to be individually checked.
-\end{description}
-\LastEdit{2011-06-01}
+% Knuth announced in 1998 that implementors would be permitted
+% alter this code without fear of being accused of non-compliance.
+% Nearly all implementations that are being actively maintained had
+% been modified to generate 4-digit years in the format file and the
+% log, by the end of 1998. The original sources themselves have now
+% been modified so that 4-digit year numbers are stored.
+
+% \item[The \csx{year} primitive:] Certification of a \TeX{}
+% implementation (see \Qref[question]{trip/trap testing}{Q-triptrap})
+% does not require that \csx{year} return a meaningful value (which
+% means that \TeX{} can, in principle, be implemented on platforms
+% that don't make the value of the clock available to user programs).
+% The \emph{\TeX{}book} (see
+% \Qref[question]{TeX-related books}{Q-tex-books}) defines \csx{year} as
+% ``the current year of our Lord'', which is the only correct meaning
+% for \csx{year} for those implementations which can supply a
+% meaningful value, which is to say nearly all of them.
+
+% In short, \TeX{} implementations should provide a value in \csx{year}
+% giving the 4-digit year Anno Domini, or the value 1776 if the
+% platform does not support a date function.
+
+% Note that if the system itself fails to deliver a correct date to
+% \TeX{}, then \csx{year} will of course return an incorrect value.
+% \TeX{} cannot be considered Y2K compliant, in this sense, on a
+% system that is not itself Y2K compliant.
+
+% \item[Macros:] \TeX{} macros can in principle perform calculations on
+% the basis of the value of \csx{year}.
+% The \Qref*{LaTeX suite}{Q-latex}
+% performs such calculations in a small number of places; the
+% calculations performed in the current (supported) version of \LaTeX{} are
+% known to be Y2K compliant.
+
+% Other macros and macro packages should be individually checked.
+
+% \item[External software:] Software such as \acro{DVI} translators
+% needs to be individually checked.
+% \end{description}
+% \LastEdit{2011-06-01}
+%
+% withdrawn 2013-05-21
\Question[Q-etex]{What is \eTeX{}?}
@@ -965,7 +969,7 @@ limit~\ensuremath{\pi} (at the time of writing, Knuth's latest release
is version 3.1415926). Knuth wants \TeX{} to be frozen at
version~\ensuremath{\pi} when he dies; thereafter, no further changes
may be made to Knuth's source. (A similar rule is applied to \MF{};
-its version number tends to the limit~\ensuremath{e}, and currently
+its version number tends to the limit~\emph{e}, and currently
stands at 2.718281.)
Knuth explains his decision, and exhorts us all to respect it, in a
@@ -978,19 +982,19 @@ There are projects (some of them long-term
projects: see, for example,
\Qref[question]{the LaTeX3 project}{Q-LaTeX3})
%\Qref[and]{and the SGML work}{Q-SGML})
-to build substantial
-new macro packages based on \TeX{}. There are also
-various projects to build a \emph{successor} to \TeX{}. The
+to build substantial new macro packages based on \TeX{}. There are
+also various projects to build a \emph{successor} to \TeX{}. The
\Qref*{\eTeX{}}{Q-etex} extension to \TeX{} itself arose from such a
project (\acro{NTS}). Another pair of projects, which have delivered
-all the results they are likely to deliver, is the related % ! line break
+all the results they are likely to deliver, is the
+related % ! line break
\Qref*{Omega and Aleph}{Q-omegaleph}. The % ! line break
\Qref*{\xetex{} system}{Q-xetex} is in principle still under
development, but is widely used, and the % ! line break
\Qref*{\LuaTeX{} project}{Q-luatex} (though not scheduled to produce
-its final product until end 2012) has already delivered a system that
-is quite useful.
-\LastEdit{2012-10-10}
+for some time) has already delivered a system that increasingly
+accessible to ``ordinary users''.
+\LastEdit{2013-05-21}
\Question[Q-readtex]{Reading \AllTeX{} files}
@@ -1049,39 +1053,51 @@ approximation to how your text will finally be printed.
The simple answer to the question is, of course, that \TeX{} was
conceived long before the marketing term, at a time when the marketing
-imperative wasn't perceived as significant. However, that was a long
-time ago: why has nothing been done with the ``wonder text processor''
-to make it fit with modern perceptions?
+imperative wasn't perceived as significant. (In fact, it appears that
+the first experimental \WYSIWYG{} systems were running in commercial
+labs, near where Knuth was working on \tex{}. At the time, of course,
+\tex{} was only available on a mainframe, and getting it to run on the
+small experimental machines would have distracted Knuth from his
+mission to create a typesetting system that he could use when
+preparing his books for publication.)
+
+However, all that was a long time ago: why has nothing been done with
+the ``wonder text processor'' to make it fit with modern perceptions?
There are two answers to this. First, the simple ``things \emph{have}
been done'' (but they've not taken over the \TeX{} world); and second,
``there are philosophical reasons why the way \TeX{} has developed is
ill-suited to the \WYSIWYG{} style''.
-Indeed, there is a fundamental problem with applying \WYSIWYG{} techniques
-to \TeX{}: the complexity of \TeX{} makes it hard to get the
-equivalent of \TeX{}'s output without actually running \TeX{}.
-A celebrated early system offering ``\WYSIWYG{} using \TeX{}'' came from the
-Vor\TeX{} project: a pair of (early) Sun workstations worked in
+Indeed, there is a fundamental problem with applying \WYSIWYG{}
+techniques to \TeX{}: the complexity of \TeX{} makes it hard to get
+the equivalent of \TeX{}'s output without actually running \TeX{} over
+the whole of the document being prepared.
+
+A celebrated early system offering ``\WYSIWYG{} using \TeX{}'' came
+from the Vor\TeX{} project: a pair of Sun workstations worked in
tandem, one handling the user interface while the other beavered away
in the background typesetting the result. Vor\TeX{} was quite
-impressive for its time, but the two workstations combined had hugely less
-power than the average sub-thousand dollar Personal Computer
+impressive for its time, but the two workstations combined had hugely
+less power than the average sub-thousand-dollar Personal Computer
nowadays, and its code has not proved portable (it never even made the
last `great' \TeX{} version change, at the turn of the 1990s, to
-\TeX{} version 3). Modern systems that are similar in
-their approach are Lightning Textures (an extension of
-Blue Sky's original \TeX{} system for the Macintosh), and Scientific
-Word (which can also cooperate with a computer algebra system); both
-these systems are \Qref*{commercially available}{Q-commercial}.
-
-The issue has of recent years started to attract attention from \TeX{}
-developers, and several interesting projects addressing the
-``\Qref*{\TeX{} document preparation environment}{Q-WYGexpts}''
+\TeX{} version 3).
+
+Lightning Textures (an extension of Blue Sky's original \TeX{} system
+for the Macintosh), is sadly no longer available.
+
+Thus``\Qref*{Scientific Word}{Q-commercial}'' (which can also interact
+with a computer algebra system), is the only remaining \tex{} system
+that even approximates to \WYSIWYG{} operation.
+
+The issue has of recent years started to attract attention
+from \TeX{} developers, and several interesting projects that address
+the ``\Qref*{\TeX{} document preparation environment}{Q-WYGexpts}''
are in progress.
-Nevertheless, the \TeX{} world has taken a long time to latch onto the
-idea of \WYSIWYG{}.
+All the same, it's clear that the \TeX{} world has taken a long time
+to latch onto the idea of \WYSIWYG{}.
Apart from simple arrogance (``we're better, and have no need to
consider the petty doings of the commercial word processor market''),
there is a real conceptual difference between the word processor model
@@ -1103,6 +1119,7 @@ challenges must needs be addressed by \TeX{}-based document
preparation support schemes, so we are
observing a degree of confluence of the needs of the two communities:
interesting times may be ahead of us.
+\LastEdit{2013-06-03}
\Question[Q-TUG*]{\TeX{} User Groups}