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<title>UK TeX FAQ -- question label etex</title>
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<h3>What is e-TeX?</h3>
<p/>While Knuth has declared that TeX will never
<a href="FAQ-TeXfuture.html">change in any substantial way</a>, there remain
things that one might wish had been done differently, or indeed
implemented at all.
<p/>The NTS project set out to produce an advanced replacement for
TeX, to provide a basis for developing such modifications: this
“New Typesetting System” would share Knuth’s aims, but would
implement the work in a modern way taking account of the lessons
learned with TeX. While a first demonstrator NTS did
appear, it wasn’t practically useful, and the project seems no longer
active.
<p/>In parallel with its work on NTS itself, the project developed
a set of extensions that can be used with a (“true”) TeX system.
Such a modified system is known as an e-TeX system, and the concept
has proved widely successful. Indeed, current TeX distributions
are delivered with most formats built with an e-TeX-based system (for
those who don’t want them, e-TeX’s extensions can be disabled, leaving
a functionally standard TeX system).
<p/>The extensions range from the seemingly simple (increasing the number
of available registers from 256 to 32768) through to extremely subtle
programming support.
<p/><a href="FAQ-context.html">ConTeXt</a> has required e-TeX for its operation
for some time.
<p/>Some LaTeX packages already specify the use of e-TeX. Some such
packages may not work at all on a non-e-TeX system; others will
work, but not as well as on an e-TeX system. The
<a href="FAQ-LaTeX3.html">LaTeX team</a> has announced that future LaTeX
packages (specifically those from the team, as opposed to those
individually contributed) may require e-TeX for optimum performance.
<p/><p>This question on the Web: <a href="http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=etex">http://www.tex.ac.uk/cgi-bin/texfaq2html?label=etex</a>
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