5 ms·

As far as I understand LaTeX3 is basically ready, it's just that the developers decided to make it available as an optional environment rather than a replacemen

by nanna 5y ago

As far as I understand LaTeX3 is basically ready, it's just that the developers decided to make it available as an optional environment rather than a replacement to LaTeX2e - which would render it incomparable with all the things. It's also not comprehensively documented, though there are introductions. Core development work, again as far as I understand, has now shifted automatically annotated pdfs (might be the wrong term). http://www.texfaq.org/FAQ-latex3-prog http://www.texfaq.org/FAQ-latex3-prog

dhosek 5y ago
Not exactly. Originally LaTeX3 was going to be a complete rewrite of LaTeX2e. In the last year or so, there was essentially a declaration of surrender and LaTeX2e+expl3/xparse is now LaTeX3 but still called LaTeX2e. There will never be a LaTeX3 exactly. Some issues with LaTeX development are essentially intractable. They're doable in theory (because TeX is Turing complete), but not in practice.
- intc 5y ago
  > Some issues with LaTeX development are essentially intractable. Could you perhaps open this claim a little? What's wrong with the L3 programming layer? (https://www.alanshawn.com/latex3-tutorial/ https://www.alanshawn.com/latex3-tutorial/ - Already integrated to the format)
  - nanna 5y ago
    Thanks for sharing this link. Really helpful.
  - dhosek 5y ago
    It's ultimately still macro expansion. Don't get me wrong, I think that the work of Frank Mittelbach et al is nothing short of miraculous (and has been for the roughly thirty years since Frank burst upon the scene). If you look under the hood it gets clear just how tough programming in TeX macros is. I have a half-finished extension to expl3 to create a zip function that will take two lists and a macro to zip the two lists into a single list (half-finished because the motivating factor was a tex.stackexchange question and there's a similar function that's underdocumented and not a proper zip that I was able to use to provide an answer).

by nanna 5y ago

dhosek 5y ago

Not exactly. Originally LaTeX3 was going to be a complete rewrite of LaTeX2e. In the last year or so, there was essentially a declaration of surrender and LaTeX2e+expl3/xparse is now LaTeX3 but still called LaTeX2e. There will never be a LaTeX3 exactly. Some issues with LaTeX development are essentially intractable. They're doable in theory (because TeX is Turing complete), but not in practice.

intc 5y ago
> Some issues with LaTeX development are essentially intractable. Could you perhaps open this claim a little? What's wrong with the L3 programming layer? (https://www.alanshawn.com/latex3-tutorial/ https://www.alanshawn.com/latex3-tutorial/ - Already integrated to the format)
- nanna 5y ago
  Thanks for sharing this link. Really helpful.
- dhosek 5y ago
  It's ultimately still macro expansion. Don't get me wrong, I think that the work of Frank Mittelbach et al is nothing short of miraculous (and has been for the roughly thirty years since Frank burst upon the scene). If you look under the hood it gets clear just how tough programming in TeX macros is. I have a half-finished extension to expl3 to create a zip function that will take two lists and a macro to zip the two lists into a single list (half-finished because the motivating factor was a tex.stackexchange question and there's a similar function that's underdocumented and not a proper zip that I was able to use to provide an answer).