Publications in 2011

TUG Conference 2011 (Trivandrum, India)

LaTeX3 architecture and current work in progress (slides)

• Frank Mittelbach
• TUG Conference 2011 (Trivandrum, India)
• LaTeX3 architecture and current work in progress (abstract)
• Video of talk: LaTeX3 architecture and current work in progress (via River Valley TV)

This talk discusses the architecture of LaTeX3 starting with the initial ideas that date back to the early ’90s. Using an example covering the whole production cycle it is shown that several different roles with different requirements are needed to turn some draft initial manuscript into a final product. The purpose of the LaTeX3 architecture is to provide adequate support for these different needs and to resolve or at least mediate conflicts between them.

While the basic building blocks of this architecture had been identified long ago an initial implementation in 1992 showed that it was impossible to use them in practice due to limitations in the processing power of the underlying engines at the time. Furthermore several ideas that were toyed with at the time—though not wrong as such— were immature and not fully thought through. As a result the project gave up on the broader redesign and instead focused on producing a consolidated LaTeX version largely based on the architecture of LaTeX2.09. This fairly successful endeavor, labeled LaTeX2e, is still the current standard LaTeX.

So why is it still relevant? Basically because the drivers and goals that led to the new architecture are issues that haven’t been successfully resolved by other typesetting systems. The difference to the situation from the ’90s is that by now processing power in the underlying engine has increased so much that it has become feasible to implement this architecture in TeX (or rather one of its successors). The other reason is that since then further work has been undertaken, refining many of the initially immature ideas. The result is a coherent vision for a future typesetting system based on the principles of TeX and LaTeX but moving them to the next level.

The talk discusses the separation of concerns as propagated by the architecture: between logical structure, design layer and the coding and implementation support. At the same time it is shown that for high-quality results this separation needs to be accompanied by built-in support for formatting adjustments and how this is supported by the architecture.

For design support the architecture provides two major complementary concepts: templates and context management. The use of design templates offers abstractions from which real designs can be derived through customization of parameters. The second approach is a general concept for managing design variations based on the actual element relationships within a document. For the two concepts both the theory is discussed and a short live demonstration is given.

Reflections on the history of the LaTeX Project Public License (LPPL) - A software license for LaTeX and more

• Frank Mittelbach
• Published paper, TUGboat volume 32, number 1, 2011
• Keywords: Licenses, LaTeX Project Public License, LPPL, LaTeX history

In August 2010 the LaTeX Project Public License (LPPL) was finally listed on the Open Source Initiative (OSI) web page as a free software license. This marks the endpoint of a long set of discussions around the TeX community’s predominant license. This article reflects on the history of the license; the way it came about and the reasons for its development and content. It explains why it was chosen even though alternative free licenses have been available at least from 1990 onwards. It appeared in the anniversary TUGboat issue No.100, TUGboat volume 32, number 1.