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Date:         Mon, 24 Nov 2008 08:21:44 +0000
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From: Joseph Wright <joseph.wright@MORNINGSTAR2.CO.UK>
Subject: Recent talk on LaTeX3
To: LATEX-L@LISTSERV.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE
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Status: R

Hello all,

At the weekend, I gave a short (20 minute) talk on LaTeX3 to the UK TeX
User Group Speaker Meeting. I've put the slides I used on my website
(http://www.morningstar2.demon.co.uk/talks/LaTeX3-from-outside.pdf) so
that people can see what I discussed.

Broadly, I covered two areas: what I see as the current ideas
implemented in LaTeX3, and what I've been doing to experiment with the
new syntax.  Hopefully I've done a reasonable job on both parts!

Will Robertson suggested that the feedback I got from the talk might be
useful here.  A few things were discussed, and I've tried to summarise
the key points below.

There were a few quite technical questions. One question was how the new
kernel would affect the ability to create a "secure" LaTeX. I suggested
it would make life easier, but couldn't be sure that LaTeX3 would
definitely be suitable for creating a secure version. I was asked about
thread safety, and said that the engine was the obvious limit there. The
idea of "object orientated LaTeX" was raised. I didn't discuss whether
this was desirable (I'm not sure myself), but again I said that the
engine (even with Lua) would be a limitation.

There was some discussion about mixing existing TeX primitives/code with
LaTeX3. I said that at the moment this works, but may not in the future.
The comparison with the MathTran secure TeX daemon was made, as it makes
many primitives undefined. There was some confusion about the current
need to run LaTeX3 "on top" of LaTeX2e, although this was resolved (a
comparison was made to running Windows Vista on DOS!). I mentioned that
as I see it when a LaTeX3 format is available most existing packages
will not work (assuming a new kernel is written entirely in the new syntax).

I also had some discussion about where the new code is in terms of being
ready to create a new format. I said that the current coding side is
more-or-less complete, but that I think the document design and user
side has a long way to go. I also mentioned that LaTeX3 will (I imagine)
need to cover a lot of what I currently done in separate packages. That
seems to be a long way from happening (for example, the basic classes
need to have the flexibility of something like memoir). On the
"readiness" side, I also pointed out that there are still a few rough
edges (for example, \etex_scantokens:D and the l3messages module).

I made the point that a lot of this may be on the team's list
"internally", but for outsiders it is hard to know what is happening.
I was asked what I imagined someone would do if they sat down now to
write a new TeX format from scratch. I said that something between
ConTeXt and LaTeX looked like the way to me. ConTeXt is a lot
more organised than LaTeX, but is best for one-off documents (there is
less "ready to run"). On the other hand, LaTeX is very good for getting
things done rapidly (for example, a quick report), but the kernel is
rather disorganised and you need a lot of support packages to get
anywhere. I suspect this is the thinking inside the team, given the way
things have gone so far.

There was also some comment on the length of time things have taken
(l3messages came up again, as an example of where this shows up). I said
that things do seem to have picked up recently. I said that I was
hopeful that we'll see real progress (for example, finalising expl3 so
it can be used more generally) soon, but again that is down to the team.

I hope this feedback is useful to the team and other interested in the
future of LaTeX.
-- 
Joseph Wright