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+% \iffalse meta-comment
+%
+% Copyright 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004
+% The LaTeX3 Project and any individual authors listed elsewhere
+% in this file.
+%
+% This file is part of the LaTeX base system.
+% -------------------------------------------
+%
+% It may be distributed and/or modified under the
+% conditions of the LaTeX Project Public License, either version 1.3
+% of this license or (at your option) any later version.
+% The latest version of this license is in
+% http://www.latex-project.org/lppl.txt
+% and version 1.3 or later is part of all distributions of LaTeX
+% version 2003/12/01 or later.
+%
+% This file has the LPPL maintenance status "maintained".
+%
+% The list of all files belonging to the LaTeX base distribution is
+% given in the file `manifest.txt'. See also `legal.txt' for additional
+% information.
+%
+% The list of derived (unpacked) files belonging to the distribution
+% and covered by LPPL is defined by the unpacking scripts (with
+% extension .ins) which are part of the distribution.
+%
+% \fi
+\documentclass[a4paper]{article}
+
+% Commands and environments:
+
+\newcommand{\eg}{e.g.~}
+\newcommand{\ie}{i.e.~}
+
+
+\newenvironment{citations}{%
+ \list{}{%
+ \renewcommand{\makelabel}[1]{\normalfont\itshape ##1}%
+ }%
+}{%
+ \endlist
+}
+
+% Some logos:
+
+\newcommand{\NFSS}{NFSS}
+
+\newcommand{\LaTeXNews}{\LaTeX~News}
+
+\newcommand{\AW}{Addison Wesley}
+
+\newcommand{\SGML}{{\sc SGML}}
+\newcommand{\DSSSL}{{\sc DSSSL}}
+\newcommand{\HTML}{{\sc HTML}}
+\newcommand{\XML}{{\sc XML}}
+\newcommand{\PDF}{{\sc PDF}}
+
+\newcommand{\PS}{{\sc Post\-Script}}
+
+\newcommand{\AmSTeX}{$\mathcal A$\lower.4ex\hbox{$\!\mathcal
+ M\!$}$\mathcal S$-\TeX}
+\newcommand{\AmSLaTeX}{$\mathcal A$\lower.4ex\hbox{$\!\mathcal
+ M\!$}$\mathcal S$-\LaTeX}
+\newcommand{\MF}{{\sc Meta\-font}}
+
+% sections
+
+\setcounter{secnumdepth}{-2}
+
+% Front matter:
+
+\title{\Large The \LaTeX3 Project}
+
+\author{\copyright 1995--1999 \
+Frank Mittelbach and
+Chris Rowley}
+
+\date{12 January 1999}
+
+\begin{document}
+
+\thispagestyle{empty}
+
+\maketitle
+
+\begin{abstract}
+ This article describes the motivation, achievements and future of
+ the \LaTeX3 Project, which was established to produce a new version
+ of \LaTeX{}, the widely-used and highly-acclaimed document
+ preparation system. It also describes how you can help us to
+ achieve our aims.\\[2pt]
+ \textbf{For Archive maintainers, Authors, Publishers and
+ Distributors:}\\
+ The project team request that, whenever possible, you include this
+ article in any of the following:
+ \begin{itemize}
+ \item Books about \TeX{} and \LaTeX{}.
+ \item Instructions for authors on using \LaTeX{}.
+ \item The printed documentation of CD-ROM collections that contain
+ \LaTeX.
+ \item On-line collections that include a significant proportion of
+ documents encoded in \LaTeX.
+\end{itemize}
+\end{abstract}
+
+\section{Outline}
+
+The purposes of the \LaTeX3 system can be summarized thus: it will
+greatly increase the range of documents which can be processed; and it
+will provide a flexible interface for typographic designers to easily
+specify the formatting of a class of documents.
+
+The \LaTeX3 Project Team is a small group of volunteers whose aim is
+to produce this major new document processing system based on the
+principles pioneered by Leslie Lamport in the current \LaTeX.
+
+The major visible work of the team before 1997 was the development of
+the current \emph{standard} version of \LaTeX{}. This was first
+released in 1994 and has since then been actively maintained and
+enhanced by extensions to that core system. They will continue to
+develop and maintain this system, releasing updated versions every six
+months and recording these activities in the \LaTeX{} bugs database
+(see below).
+
+Although \LaTeX{} may be distributed freely, the production and
+maintenance of the system does require expenditure of reasonably large
+sums of money. The \LaTeX3 Project Fund has therefore been set up to
+channel money into this work. We know that some users are
+aware of this fund as they have already contributed to it---many
+thanks to all of them! If you want to know more about how you can
+help the project, see Page \pageref{fund}---and thanks in advance for
+your generosity in the future.
+
+
+\section{Background}
+
+With \TeX{}, Knuth designed a formatting system that is able to
+produce a large range of documents typeset to extremely high quality
+standards. For various reasons (\eg quality, portability, stability
+and availability) \TeX{} spread very rapidly and can nowadays be best
+described as a world-wide de facto standard for high quality
+typesetting. Its use is particularly common in specialized areas, such
+as technical documents of various kinds, and for multi-lingual
+requirements.
+
+The \TeX{} system is fully programmable. This allows the development
+of high-level user interfaces whose input is processed by \TeX{}'s
+interpreter to produce low-level typesetting instructions; these are
+input to \TeX{}'s typesetting engine which outputs the format of each
+page in a device-independent page-description language. The \LaTeX{}
+system is such an interface; it was designed to support the needs of
+long documents such as textbooks and manuals. It separates content and
+form as much as possible by providing the user with a generic (\ie
+logical rather than visual) mark-up interface; this is combined with
+style sheets which specify the formatting.
+
+Recent years have shown that the concepts and approach of \LaTeX{} are
+now widely accepted. Indeed, \LaTeX{} has become the standard method
+of communicating and publishing documents in many academic
+disciplines. This has led to many publishers accepting \LaTeX{}
+source for articles and books; and the American Mathematical Society
+now provides a \LaTeX{} package making the features of \AmSTeX{}
+available to all users of \LaTeX{}. Its use has also spread into many
+other commercial and industrial environments, where the technical
+qualities of \TeX{} together with the concepts of \LaTeX{} are
+considered a powerful combination of great importance to such areas as
+corporate documentation and publishing. This has also extended to
+on-line publishing using, for example, \PDF{} output incorporating
+hypertext and other active areas.
+
+With the spreading use of \SGML{}-compliant systems (\eg Web-based
+publishing using \HTML{} or \XML{}) \TeX{} again is a common choice as
+the formatting engine for high quality typeset output: a widely used
+such system is {\em The Publisher\/} from ArborText, whilst a more
+recent development is the object-oriented document editor Grif. The
+latter is used for document processing in a wide range of industrial
+applications; it has also been adopted by the Euromath consortium as
+the basis of their mathematician's workbench, one of the most advanced
+of the emerging project-oriented user environments. Typeset output
+from \SGML{}-coded documents in these systems is obtained by
+translation into \LaTeX{}, which will therefore soon also be a natural
+choice for the output of \DSSSL-compliant systems.
+
+Because a typical \SGML{} Document Type Definition (DTD) uses concepts
+similar to those of \LaTeX{}, the formatting is often implemented by
+simply mapping document elements to \LaTeX{} constructs rather than
+directly to `raw \TeX'.
+This enables the
+sophisticated analytical techniques built into the \LaTeX{}
+software to be exploited; and it avoids the need to program in \TeX{}.
+
+\section{Motivation}
+
+This increase in the range of applications of \LaTeX{} has highlighted
+certain limitations of the current system, both for authors of
+documents and for designers of formatting styles.
+
+In addition to the need to extend the variety of classes of document
+which can be processed by \LaTeX{}, substantial enhancements are
+necessary in, at least, the following areas:
+ \begin{itemize}
+ \item
+ the command syntax (attributes, short references, etc);
+ \item
+ the layout specification interface (style design);
+ \item
+ the level of robustness (error recovery, omitted tags);
+ \item
+ the extendibility (package interface);
+ \item
+ the layout specification of tabular material;
+ \item
+ the specification and inclusion of graphical material;
+ \item
+ the positioning of floating material, and other aspects of page
+ layout;
+ \item
+ the requirements of hypertext systems.
+ \end{itemize}
+
+ Further analysis of these deficiencies has shown that some of the
+ problems are to be found in \LaTeX{}'s internal concepts and design.
+ This project to produce a new version therefore involves thorough
+ research into the challenges posed by new applications and by the use
+ of \LaTeX{} as a formatter for a wide range of documents, \eg \SGML{}
+ documents; on-line \PDF{} documents with hypertext links.
+
+ This will result in a major re-implementation of large parts of the
+ system. Some of the results of such rethinking of the fundamentals
+ are already available in Standard \LaTeX{}, notably in the following
+ areas:
+
+\begin{itemize}
+\item Font declaration and selection;
+\item Font and glyph handling within mathematical formulas;
+\item Handling multiple font glyph encodings within a document;
+\item Allowing multiple input character encodings within a document;
+\item A uniform interface for graphics inclusion;
+\item Support for coloured text;
+\item Building and interfacing new classes and extension packages.
+\end{itemize}
+
+
+\section{Description}
+
+The strengths of the present version of \LaTeX{} are
+as follows:
+ \begin{itemize}
+ \item excellent standard of typesetting for text, technical
+formulas\\
+and tabular material;
+ \item separation of generic mark-up from visual formatting;
+ \item ease of use for authors;
+ \item portability of documents over a wide range of platforms;
+ \item adaptability to many languages;
+ \item widespread and free availability;
+ \item reliable support and maintenance by the \LaTeX3 project team.
+ \end{itemize}
+ These will be preserved and in many cases greatly enhanced by the new
+ version which is being developed to fulfill the following requirements.
+ \begin{itemize}
+ \item
+ It will provide a syntax that allows highly automated translation
+ from popular \SGML{} DTDs into \LaTeX{} document classes (these
+ will be provided as standard with the new version).
+
+ The syntax of the new \LaTeX{} user-interface will, for example,
+ support the \SGML{} concepts of `entity', `attribute' and `short
+ reference' in such a way that these can be directly linked to the
+ corresponding \SGML{} features.
+
+ \item
+ It will support hypertext links and other features required for
+ on-line structured documents using, for example, \HTML{} and \XML{}.
+
+\item
+ It will provide a straightforward style-designer interface to support
+ both the specification of a wide variety of typographic requirements
+ and the linking of entities in the generic mark-up of a document to
+ the desired formatting. These two parts of the design process will
+ be clearly separated so that it is possible to specify different
+ layouts for the same DTD.
+
+ The language and syntax of this interface will be as natural as
+ possible for a typographic designer. As a result, this language
+ could easily be interfaced to a visually-oriented, menu-driven
+ specification system.
+
+ This interface will also support \DSSSL{} specifications and
+ style-sheet concepts such as those used with \HTML{} and \XML{}.
+
+ \item
+ It will provide an enhanced user-interface that allows expression of
+ the typesetting requirements from a large range of subject areas. Some
+ examples are listed here.
+
+ \begin{itemize}
+ \item The requirements of technical documentation (\eg offset layout,\\
+ change bars, etc).
+ \item The requirements of academic publishing in the humanities\\
+ (critical text editions, etc).
+ \item The requirements of structural formulas in chemistry.
+ \item Advanced use of the mathematical-typesetting features of \TeX{}.
+ \item The integration of graphical features, such as shading,
+ within text.
+ \item the integration of hypertext and other links in on-line
+ documents using systems such as \HTML{}, \XML{} and \PDF{}.
+
+ \end{itemize}
+
+ Special care will be taken to ensure that this interface is
+ extensible: this will be achieved by use of modular designs.
+
+
+ \item
+ It will provide a more robust author-interface. For example,
+ artificial restrictions on the nesting of commands will be removed.
+ Error handling will be improved by adding
+ a more effective, interactive help system.
+
+ \item
+ It will provide access to arbitrary fonts from any family (such as
+ the \PS{} and TrueType fonts) including a wide range of fonts for
+ multi-lingual documents and the specialist glyphs required by
+ documents in various technical and academic areas.
+
+ \item
+ The new interfaces will be documented in detail and the
+ system will provide extensive catalogues of examples, carefully
+ designed to make the learning time for new users (both designers and
+ authors) as short as possible.
+
+ \item
+ The code itself will be thoroughly documented and it will be
+ designed on modular principles. Thus the system will be easy to
+ maintain and to enhance.
+\end{itemize}
+
+The resulting new \LaTeX{} will, like the present version, be usable
+with any standard \TeX{} system (or whatever replaces it) and so will
+be freely available on a wide range of platforms.
+
+
+\section{\LaTeX{} documentation}
+
+\begingroup
+\setlength{\parindent}{0pt}
+
+A complete description of Standard \LaTeX{} can be found in:
+\begin{citations}
+\item[\LaTeX: A Document Preparation System]
+ Leslie Lamport,\\ \AW, 2nd ed, 1994.
+\item[The \LaTeX{} Companion]
+ Goossens, Mittelbach and Samarin,\\ \AW, 1994.
+\end{citations}
+
+A recent addition to the publications closely associated with the
+project is:
+\begin{citations}
+\item[The \LaTeX{} Graphics Companion]
+ Goossens, Mittelbach and Rahtz,\\ \AW, 1997.
+\end{citations}
+
+This \LaTeX{} distribution comes with documentation on several aspects
+of of the system. The newer features of the system are described in
+the following documents:
+\begin{citations}
+\item[\LaTeXe{} for authors]
+ describes the new features of \LaTeX{} documents,
+ in the file \texttt{usrguide.tex};
+\item[\LaTeXe{} for class and package writers]
+ describes how to produce \LaTeX{} classes and packages,
+ in the file \texttt{clsguide.tex};
+\item[\LaTeXe{} font selection]
+ describes the new features of \LaTeX{} fonts for
+ class and package writers,
+ in the file \texttt{fntguide.tex}.
+\end{citations}
+
+For further contacts and sources of information on \TeX{} and
+\LaTeX{}, see the addresses on Page~\pageref{contacts}.
+
+\endgroup
+\pagebreak
+
+
+\section{The \LaTeX3 Project Fund}
+\label{fund}
+
+Although \LaTeX{} may be distributed freely, the production and
+maintenance of the system does require expenditure of reasonably large
+sums of money. There are many necessities that need substantial
+financing: examples are new or enhanced computing equipment and travel
+to team meetings (the volunteers come from many different countries,
+so getting together occasionally is a non-trivial exercise).
+
+This is why we are appealing to you for contributions to the fund.
+Any sum will be much appreciated; the amount need not be large as
+small contributions add up to very useful amounts. Contributions of
+suitable equipment and software will also be of great value. This
+appeal is both to you as an individual author and to you as a member
+of a group or as an employee: please encourage your department or your
+employer to contribute towards sustaining our work.
+
+We should like to see funded projects that make considerable use of
+\LaTeX{} (\eg conferences and research teams who use it to publish
+their work, and electronic research archives using it) include
+contributions to this fund in their budgets. %% e-print systems
+
+We are also asking commercial organisations to assess the benefits
+they gain from using, or distributing, a well-supported \LaTeX{} and
+to make appropriate contributions to the fund in order that we can
+continue to maintain and improve the product. If you work for, or do
+business with, such an organisation, please bring to the attention of
+the relevant people the existence and needs of the project.
+
+In particular, we ask that all the large number of organisations and
+businesses that distribute \LaTeX{}, within other software or as part
+of a CD-ROM collection, should consider pricing all products containing
+\LaTeX{} at a level that enables them to make regular donations to the
+fund from the profit on these items. We also ask all authors and
+publishers of books about \LaTeX{} to consider donating part of the
+royalties to the fund.
+
+Contributions should be sent to one of the following addresses:
+\begin{quote}\small\label{addrs}
+ \TeX{} Users Group, P.O. Box 2311, Portland, OR~97208-2311 USA\\
+ Fax:~+1~503~223~3960 \ Email: \texttt{tug@tug.org}
+
+ \noindent
+ UK TUG, 1 Eymore Close, Selly Oak, Birmingham B29~4LB UK\\
+ Fax: +44 121 476 2159 \ Email: \texttt{uktug-enquiries@tex.ac.uk}
+\end{quote}
+
+Cheques should be payable to the user group (TUG or UKTUG) and be
+clearly marked as contributions to the \LaTeX3 fund.
+Many thanks to all of you who have contributed in the past and thanks
+in advance for your generosity in the future.
+
+\section{Contacts and information}
+\label{contacts}
+
+In addition to the sources mentioned above, \LaTeX{} has its home page
+on the World Wide Web at:
+\begin{verbatim}
+ http://www.latex-project.org/
+\end{verbatim}
+This page describes \LaTeX{} and the \LaTeX3 project, and contains
+pointers to other \LaTeX{} resources, such as the user guides, the
+\TeX{} Frequently Asked Questions, and the \LaTeX{} bugs database.
+
+More general information, including contacts for local User Groups,
+can be accessed via:
+\begin{verbatim}
+ http://www.tug.org/
+\end{verbatim}
+
+The electronic home of anything \TeX-related is the Comprehensive
+\TeX{} Archive Network (CTAN). This is a network of cooperating ftp
+sites, with over a gigabyte of \TeX{} material:
+\begin{verbatim}
+ ftp://cam.ctan.org/tex-archive/
+ ftp://dante.ctan.org/tex-archive/
+ ftp://tug.ctan.org/tex-archive/
+\end{verbatim}
+
+For more information, see the \LaTeX{} home page.
+
+
+\end{document}
+
+
+