The LaTeX project
The LaTeX project team (see http://www.latex-project.org/latex3.html)
is a small group of volunteers whose aim is
to produce a major new document processing system based on the
principles pioneered by Leslie Lamport in the current LaTeX. The
new system is (provisionally) called LaTeX3; it
will remain freely available and it will be fully documented at
all levels.
The LaTeX team’s first product (LaTeX2e) was delivered in 1994
(it’s now properly called “LaTeX”, since no other version is current).
LaTeX2e was intended as a consolidation exercise, unifying several
sub-variants of LaTeX while changing nothing whose change wasn’t
absolutely necessary. This has permitted the team to support a single
version of LaTeX, in parallel with development of LaTeX3.
Some of the older discussion papers about directions for LaTeX3 are
to be found on CTAN; other (published) articles are to be found
on the project web site (http://www.latex-project.org/papers/),
as is some of the project’s experimental code (see
http://www.latex-project.org/code.html, which allows you to read
the project’s source repository). Snapshots of two major collections
from the code, expl3 (supporting LaTeX3 coding
conventions in a LaTeX2e environment) and and xpackages (a
first cut of a “document designer’s interface”) are available on
CTAN. Several developers are known to be working on their own
code using expl3, but all
Anyone may participate in discussions of the future of LaTeX
through the mailing list latex-l
; some development work
(outside the project) is discussed on the list. Subscribe to the list
by sending a message ‘subscribe latex-l <your name>
’
to listserv@urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de
- expl3 bundle
- macros/latex/contrib/expl3 (or browse the directory)
- LaTeX project publications
- info/ltx3pub (or browse the directory)
- xpackages bundle
- macros/latex/contrib/xpackages (or browse the directory)
This question on the Web: http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=LaTeX3