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<head>
<title>UK TeX FAQ -- question label TeXfuture</title>
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<h3>What is the future of TeX?</h3>
<p/>Knuth has declared that he will do no further development of TeX;
he will continue to fix any bugs that are reported to him (though
bugs are rare).  This decision was made soon after
TeX version 3.0 was released; at each bug-fix release
the version number acquires one more digit, so that it tends to the
limit pi (at the time of writing, Knuth&rsquo;s latest release
is version 3.1415926).  Knuth wants TeX to be frozen at
version pi when he dies; thereafter, no further changes
may be made to Knuth&rsquo;s source.  (A similar rule is applied to Metafont;
its version number tends to the limit e, and currently
stands at 2.718281.)
<p/>Knuth explains his decision, and exhorts us all to respect it, in a
paper originally published in 
<a href="http://tug.org/TUGboat/Articles/tb11-4/tb30knut.pdf"><i>TUGboat</i> 11(4)</a>,
and reprinted in the 
<a href="http://www.ntg.nl/maps/pdf/5_34.pdf">NTG journal MAPS</a>.
<p/>There are projects (some of them long-term
projects: see, for example,
<a href="FAQ-LaTeX3.html">the LaTeX3 project</a>)

to build substantial
new macro packages based on TeX.  For the even longer term, there
are various projects to build a <em>successor</em> to TeX; see, for example,
the

<a href="FAQ-luatex.html">\LuaTeX</a>,
<a href="FAQ-omegaleph.html">Omega/Aleph</a> and
<a href="FAQ-extex.html">ExTeX</a>
  projects.
<p/><p>This question on the Web: <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=TeXfuture">http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=TeXfuture</a>
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