Message-ID:  <970416200537.37211028@vms.rhbnc.ac.uk>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project
              <LATEX-L@RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE>
Date:         Wed, 16 Apr 1997 20:05:37 +0100
From: "Philip Taylor (RHBNC)" <CHAA006@VMS.RHBNC.AC.UK>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project
              <LATEX-L@RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE>
To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L
              <LATEX-L@RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE>
Subject:      Re: Alternatives to LaTeX (Was Some comments...)
Status: R

>> For this to work, there must be a body that issues TeX upgrades, which
>> are suffiently conservative that the many TeX implementations only need to
>> flip in the new source code, I think.

We do have to be really careful about terminology here: there can't
be any upgrades to TeX unless they are issued by DEK himself; he
will look at TeX at ever-increasing intervals, and he intends to
make no changes (other than pure bug-fixes) whatsoever.

As an alternative, the e-TeX/NTS team propose e-TeX; it is 100%
compatible with TeX, written in pure Pascal Web as a changefile,
and should be readily ported to every modern platform (versions
currently exist for VMS, MS/DOS, Unix, Amiga and Windows 32/95,
plus perhaps other systems of which we are currently unaware).

e-TeX V1.1 was released about six months ago; we have had no
bug reports since then.  e-TeX V1.1 offers over 30 additional
primitives when compared to TeX V3.14159, most of which are
accessible in extended mode (that is, in a mode which does not
compromise compatibility with TeX); the remainder operate in
enhanced mode, within which the bi-directional TeX--XeT
environment becomes available.

e-TeX is documented at, and available from

        http://www.rhbnc.ac.uk/e-TeX/

Philip Taylor, Tehcnical Director, e-TeX & NTS projects.