Some answers: - Default output to PDF has been there for years. - The base .tex syntax will probably never change, but there is no reason why some tool/plugin/

Some answers: - Default output to PDF has been there for years. - The base .tex syntax will probably never change, but there is no reason why some tool/plugin/luatex extension couldn't read something else and convert as necessary. I used Deplate and Pandoc for a while. - AFAIK ConTeXt has some integrated replacement for bibtex I don't think we need a successor to LaTeX. The base is solid and ready to be built on, especially now with a sane programming language in the core of LuaTeX.