David: >> But the question then arises: why e-TeX? Why not Omega, an >> e-TeX/Omega hybrid, . . . ? > > Because functionality present in e-TeX is desperately needed for > implementing more versatile output routines than the present, was > explicitly requested by LaTeX project team members and implemented > for their sake. The functionality present in Omega is needed for some critical tasks (at least, I need them more desperately than those in e-TeX). > In contrast, Omega is a moving target and widely undocumented. The > features specific to Omega are rather orthogonal to most of the > problems the LaTeX3 project is tackling. I cannot speak for the LaTeX3 team, but I don's think so. Integrating LaTeX with Unicode, XML, SVG and multilingual environments should be one of the current goals of LaTeX. While it's true Omega is undocumented and its developement somewhat "arcane", I don't see another possibility. Anyway, see the following: ======= Developing and releasing the Omega system: A white paper 16 November 2002, John Plaice and Yannis Haralambous. http://omega.cse.unsw.edu.au:8080/roadmap/white-0.3.pdf An extensible approach to high-quality multilingual typesetting Submitted for publication, October 2002 John Plaice, Yannis Haralambous, and Chris Rowley. http://omega.cse.unsw.edu.au:8080/roadmap/mlim-submission.pdf Programming extensions needed in Omega 21 May 2001, Frank Mittelbach and Chris Rowley. http://omega.cse.unsw.edu.au:8080/roadmap/ex-omega.pdf ======= Javier