To give a bit of history:

expl3 is the result of older work (including complete trial implementations
of standalone kernels for testing in various flavors) and was intended to
produce a platform for experimentation on top of 2e with the new syntax and
models

the experimental xpackages have been developed later using variants of that
syntax (mainly playing around with alternatives) while at the same time
exploring actual new concepts (eg for the OR, the template stuff,
frontmatter, ...) --- as a result they have quite different conventions from
one module to the next.

it is my firm believe after having done (or participated) in these trial
developments that

 a) the original expl3 ideas are sound and better than what was tried as
alternatives later on

 b) that there are a number of glitches in the expl3 that need sorting out

 c) that to go on from what is there now the experimental code first needs
consolidation and normalization

thus what i'm doing right now is

 - converting the existing packages in experimental to expl3
 - collecting what i think is needed in terms of change/addition to expl3

i'm in the middle of doing that for xbase, xfrontm, and xor (also alrady
wrote up xlang implementing the ideas I presented in Japan on a
multi-lingual language model)

meaning right now the internals are changing drastically as the packages are
not very uniform in their syntax

I hope that this normalization is soon ready. I then intend to make that
public for discussion as well as opening a discussion on fixing a final
expl3 to be used for further work

so to answer what to focus on: i'd say expl3 playing with it and joining a
discussion of  streng and weekness (yes you started that already with our
other question) and to look at the explerimental packages only from their
implemented functionality (eg the template interface) but not from their
internal implementation

frank

-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project
[mailto:[log in to unmask]] Im Auftrag von Hendri Adriaens
Gesendet: Dienstag, 12. Oktober 2004 15:41
An: [log in to unmask]
Betreff: Re: expl3 and experimental


> Hi,
>
> now that I am reading the LaTeX3 work, I have the following question:

[Hmm, sorry for this redundant mail, slip of the keyboard...]

Hi,

now that I am reading the LaTeX3 work, I have the following question: What
is the relation of the work located at these places?
http://www.ctan.org/tex-archive/macros/latex/exptl/project/expl3
http://www.latex-project.org/code/experimental ?

More specific, I can find some of the work of the first location integrated
in some files in the second location, but not everything.

What should I be focussing on?

Thanks, best regards,
-Hendri Adriaens.