Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcsun!hp4nl!ruuinf!piet
From: piet@cs.ruu.nl (Piet van Oostrum)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: LaTeX 2.10/3.0
Keywords: LaTeX, Mittlebach, Schoepf
Message-ID: <3746@ruuinf.cs.ruu.nl>
Date: 6 Sep 90 15:58:30 GMT
References: <1990Sep3.010417.21701@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu>
Sender: news@ruuinf.cs.ruu.nl
Reply-To: piet@cs.ruu.nl (Piet van Oostrum)
Organization: Dept of Computer Science, Utrecht University, The Netherlands
Lines: 81
In-reply-to: dmjones@theory.lcs.mit.edu (David M. Jones)

In article <1990Sep3.010417.21701@mintaka.lcs.mit.edu>, dmjones@theory (David M. Jones) writes:
 |
 |By updating our version of LaTeX, I mostly mean grabbing Mittlebach
 |and Schopf's code from ymir.claremont.edu and making it available on
 |our system.  This also means replacing LaTeX's font selection
 |mechanism by the M&S scheme.  However, before I actually turn this
 |whole system loose on the local users, I have a few questions.
 |
 |1.  I have before me an article entitled "Towards LaTeX 2.10," by M&S,
 |that appeared in in the November 1989 issue of TUGboat, in which they
 |talk about a few of the changes they are making.  First of all, has
 |LaTeX 2.10 been dumped in favor of LaTeX 3.0? 

Apparently. I heard a presentation by Frank Mittelbach last week and there was no mention of 2.10

 |re-implementation of LaTeX.)  Second, have Mittlebach and Schoepf
 |released any more details of how extensive their revision will be?

They will try to keep it as much compatible as is possible. That is at the
user level.
There will be a new style-designer interface (more things customizable, and
better documented). The new array and theorem styles will be part of LaTeX;
the notion of fragile commands will disappear. Environments will get
attributes, which is an extension of the current optional arguments. Better
float handling. Better support for mathematics (like the amstex option).
International language support. User definable hooks in various places.
More elaborate front matter. and so on.

 |2. What problems can I expect with the version of LaTeX I've described
 |above?  I.e., LaTeX 2.09 (version of 7 Dec 1989), running under TeX
 |3.0 (with Mittelbach's modified lplain.tex from ymir), and with
 |Mittlebach's font selection code installed?  What is likely to change
 |enough that the users will notice and come after me with sharp
 |implements?

My experiences:
A number of style files (or users themselves) use things like \tensl, which
are not defined in the new font selection scheme.
The new scheme does not work with old LASY font files. You have to get the
new ones. (the symbols like \unlhd are in the new fonts, whereas in the old
LaTeX they were built from other symbols).
Selecting the new font selection mechanism (i.e. newlfonts.sty as default)
may surprise some users. On the other hand selecting oldlfonts.sty as
default (as I did) will sometimes give problems with exhausted math families.

In article <8256@jarthur.Claremont.EDU>, dhosek@hmcvax (Hosek, Donald A.) writes:
 |
 |The two biggest gotchas are [1] letter.sty won't work. The local
 |solution here, since our TeX tree is also a distribution point
 |was to configure paths so that a file letter.sty which inputs the
 |original letter.sty and then makes the necessary changes is found
 |before the original, non-functioning letter.sty. By renaming the
 |old letter.sty to, say, oldletter.sty, the path trickery is not
 |necessary. The changes I made are in the file
 |[anonymous.tex.inputs.local]letter.sty on ymir.claremont.edu.

I made a change that works with both versions:

*** letter.sty.~1~	Tue Mar 14 17:54:32 1989
--- letter.sty	Tue May 15 12:53:03 1990
***************
*** 212,220 ****
--- 212,224 ----
   \begingroup\@floatplacement\@dblfloatplacement\endgroup
   \if@filesw \immediate\openout\@mainaux=\jobname.aux
   \immediate\write\@mainaux{\string\startlabels\string\@startlabels}\fi
+  \csname process@table\endcsname
   \def\do##1{\let ##1\@notprerr}
   \@preamblecmds
   \let\do\noexpand 
+  \ifx\undefined\selectfont\else
+     \gdef\xpt{\family{cmr}\series{m}\shape{n}\size{10}{12pt}\selectfont}
+  \fi
   \@normalsize\everypar{}}
  \def\enddocument{\@checkend{document}\newpage\begingroup 
  \if@filesw \immediate\closeout\@mainaux 
-- 
Piet* van Oostrum, Dept of Computer Science, Utrecht University,
Padualaan 14, P.O. Box 80.089, 3508 TB Utrecht, The Netherlands.
Telephone: +31 30 531806   Uucp:   uunet!mcsun!ruuinf!piet
Telefax:   +31 30 513791   Internet:  piet@cs.ruu.nl   (*`Pete')