On 21/01/2009, at 11:23 AM, Karl Berry wrote: >> I've had a go at summarising the key aims of LaTeX3, as I understand >> them, on my blog (http://www.texdev.net). > > I'm very glad to read that, unofficial as it is. > > My question is, is LaTeX3 intended to be able to process real-life > LaTeX2e packages + documents (perhaps in some kind of compatibility > mode a la LaTeX 2.09 -> 2e)? From the way things look to me, that will basically be impossible. The changes between LaTeX3 and LaTeX2e are much greater than between 2e and 2.09. Perhaps a strict subset of LaTeX2e documents will be able to be processed with LaTeX3, but I think we'll end up with two distinct document processing systems. That is, I doubt that LaTeX2e will ever be "replaced" by LaTeX3 -- people who need backwards compatibility will have to use the old code. On the other hand, it might be possible to detect when a 2e document is being processed and "drop down" into the old code automatically, but it's probably too early to say since we're not even building a separate LaTeX3 format at this stage (well, I'm not, at least). We could probably write a "frequently asked questions" page to address questions like this. W