Description

The strengths of the present version of L^ATEX are as follows:

• excellent standard of typesetting for text, technical formulas
  and tabular material;
• separation of generic mark-up from visual formatting;
• ease of use for authors;
• portability of documents over a wide range of platforms;
• adaptability to many languages;
• widespread and free availability;
• reliable support and maintenance by the L^ATEX3 project team.

These will be preserved and in many cases greatly enhanced by the new version which is being developed to fulfill the following requirements.

• It will provide a syntax that allows highly automated translation from popular SGML DTDs into L^ATEX document classes (these will be provided as standard with the new version).

  The syntax of the new L^ATEX user-interface will, for example, support the SGML concepts of `entity', `attribute' and `short reference' in such a way that these can be directly linked to the corresponding SGML features.

• It will support hypertext links and other features required for on-line structured documents using, for example, HTML and XML.

• It will provide a straightforward style-designer interface to support both the specification of a wide variety of typographic requirements and the linking of entities in the generic mark-up of a document to the desired formatting. These two parts of the design process will be clearly separated so that it is possible to specify different layouts for the same DTD.

  The language and syntax of this interface will be as natural as possible for a typographic designer. As a result, this language could easily be interfaced to a visually-oriented, menu-driven specification system.

  This interface will also support DSSSL specifications and style-sheet concepts such as those used with HTML and XML.

• It will provide an enhanced user-interface that allows expression of the typesetting requirements from a large range of subject areas. Some examples are listed here.
  • The requirements of technical documentation (e.g. offset layout,
    change bars, etc).
  • The requirements of academic publishing in the humanities
    (critical text editions, etc).
  • The requirements of structural formulas in chemistry.
  • Advanced use of the mathematical-typesetting features of TEX.
  • The integration of graphical features, such as shading, within text.
  • the integration of hypertext and other links in on-line documents using systems such as HTML, XML and PDF.

  Special care will be taken to ensure that this interface is extensible: this will be achieved by use of modular designs.

• It will provide a more robust author-interface. For example, artificial restrictions on the nesting of commands will be removed. Error handling will be improved by adding a more effective, interactive help system.
• It will provide access to arbitrary fonts from any family (such as the POSTSCRIPT and TrueType fonts) including a wide range of fonts for multi-lingual documents and the specialist glyphs required by documents in various technical and academic areas.

• The new interfaces will be documented in detail and the system will provide extensive catalogues of examples, carefully designed to make the learning time for new users (both designers and authors) as short as possible.
• The code itself will be thoroughly documented and it will be designed on modular principles. Thus the system will be easy to maintain and to enhance.

The resulting new L^ATEX will, like the present version, be usable with any standard TEX system (or whatever replaces it) and so will be freely available on a wide range of platforms.