doc/ltnews16.tex

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  29 % Filename: ltnews16.tex
  30 %
  31 % This is issue 16 of LaTeX News.
  32
  33 \documentclass
  34 %    [lw35fonts]     % uncomment this line to get Palatino
  35    {ltnews}[2004/02/28]
  36
  37 % \usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
  38
  39 \publicationmonth{December}
  40 \publicationyear{2003}
  41 \publicationissue{16}
  42
  43 \begin{document}
  44
  45 \maketitle
  46
  47 %\raisefirstsection
  48
  49 \section{Anniversary news}
  50
  51 This anniversary \textit{Issue~16} takes a brief look into the future work of
  52 the \LaTeX3 Project Team, both short and and longer range.  Please let
  53 us know if you want %\newline
  54 to get involved with us in any of this work (see below).
  55
  56 An overview of the 10th Anniversary Release, dated 2003/12/01, is
  57 can be found in \textit{Issue~15}.
  58
  59
  60 \section{TLC2: The \LaTeX{} Companion -- 2nd edition!}
  61
  62 Since you are reading this newsletter, there is a good chance that
  63 you, or a friend, has already bought this encyclopedic volume: the
  64 incomparable Second\newline
  65 Edition of this work that is every \LaTeX{}ie's\newline
  66 ultimate lucky charm.
  67
  68 If by some chance you have not yet purchased your own copy then get
  69 into training, get shopping, and get flexing your muscles (both
  70 physical---it's $1100+$~pages,\newline
  71 and intellectual) by using it to discover
  72 masses of invaluable `insider information' about:
  73 \begin{itemize}
  74 \item the latest release of Standard \LaTeX{};
  75 \item over~200~extension packages;
  76 \item plus related software and systems.
  77 \end{itemize}
  78 For more information on this all new (??\ldots OK,\newline
  79 not \emph{all}, but over 90\%!!),
  80 all accurate (we hope!)\newline
  81 10th~Anniversary Edition, check out\newline
  82  \mbox{\url{http://www.awprofessional.com/titles/0201362996}}.
  83
  84
  85 \section{Future maintenance}
  86
  87 We are currently exploring how best to support the very large and
  88 rapidly growing community of individuals, organisations and
  89 enterprises that depend on the robustness and availability of the
  90 current standard \LaTeX{} distribution.  Although we remain firmly\newline
  91 resolved not to make changes in the base distribution (the kernel) of
  92 Standard \LaTeX{}, there is still much that needs doing to maintain
  93 its reliability and utility and to keep up the necessary level of
  94 communication with users and supporters.  Also, as with all advanced
  95 software systems, bugs are still turning up occasionally so %\newline
  96 some fixes are still essential.
  97
  98 One major impediment to providing adequate service levels in this area
  99 is, of course, the difficulties inherent in obtaining the time and
 100 commitment of skilled minds---hence the appeal above to anyone
 101 interested %\newline
 102 in getting involved.
 103
 104
 105 \section{LPPL certification}
 106
 107 There are still some outstanding diplomatic tasks around the
 108 \LaTeX{} Project Public Licence: these include
 109 e.g.,~getting it `OSF certified' and ensuring that it gains
 110 more support and wider use, even in the FSF world\newline
 111 where it has long been tolerated.
 112
 113
 114 \section{Use of \eTeX/pdf\TeX}
 115
 116 We expect that within the next two years, releases of \LaTeX{} will
 117 change modestly in order to run best under an extended \TeX{} engine
 118 that contains the \eTeX{} primitives, e.g., \eTeX{} or pdf\TeX{}.
 119 The details of this possible upgrade need further work so we are not
 120 making a definite announcement yet.
 121
 122 Although the current release does not \emph{require} \eTeX{} features,
 123 we certainly recommend using an extended \TeX{}, especially if you
 124 need to debug macros.
 125
 126
 127 \section{End of `autoload' support}
 128
 129 As computer systems generally grow in capacity, requirements change
 130 and so we believe that the \package{autoload} variant of \LaTeX{} is
 131 no longer required.  Thus, although the code remains it is no longer
 132 supported.  We hope this does not cause any problems.
 133
 134
 135 \section{New models, new code}
 136
 137 In the period 1999--2001 we published many results of our work over
 138 the previous decade on the development of new concepts and models
 139 for automated typesetting based on \TeX{} as the underlying platform.
 140 These can be found at \url{http://www.latex-project.org/papers/}
 141 and
 142 \mbox{\url{http://www.latex-project.org/code/experimental/}}.
 143
 144 Since then a very large proportion of the The Team's efforts have been
 145 diverted to provide the core author team for TLC2, which provides
 146 over 1000 pages of carefully researched and tested documentation of
 147 many aspects of the vast world of \LaTeX{} related software that
 148 was developed over that same time period and that continues
 149 to grow and improve prodigiously.
 150
 151 Completion of that task \ldots\ until TLC3!! \ldots\ presents the
 152 possibility of getting back to this more exciting development work,
 153 or even to more radical work on non-\TeX{}-based models and
 154 implementations.
 155
 156 Of course, any such ideas are predicated on our ability to organise
 157 (with you, we hope) an efficient\newline
 158 but responsive maintenance and support system\newline
 159 for Standard \LaTeX{}.
 160
 161 \end{document}