On 01/01/2011 18:17, TeXWorld wrote: > Hello, > > What engines LaTeX3 is (and will be) designed to work with ? Like > LaTeX2e it will work with TeX, PDFTeX, XeTeX, LuaTeX, (Aleph...???), or > with a more limited list such as LuaTeX and XeTeX ? I'd like to know if > a decision has been taken and whether it has, I'd like to know why such > a decision. > > Thank you. > > Jack > Hello Jack, I think a bit of history is needed here. At first, the only primitives that expl3 *required* were those from TeX82 (Knuth's TeX). Some years ago now, it was decied to require the e-TeX extensions. These allow a number of functions to be carried out which are difficult or impossible otherwise. More recently, we have added \pdfstrcmp to the list of required primitives. This primitive allows expandable string-based comparisons, which are important for some low-level expl3 functions. So the requirement at present is a TeX engine which includes the e-TeX extensions and the functionality of \pdfstrcmp. This means the following engines should work: - pdfTeX v1.30 or later - XeTeX v0.9994 or later - LuaTeX v0.40 or later As LaTeX3 is far from ready, this may change in the future. However, the team have always been relatively cautious about engine requirements, and I expect that the above will remain as the minimum engine list for some time to come. (With LuaTeX, I'd strongly recommend a newer engine, given the pace of development of the binary. I'd *suggest* at least 0.60.) Joseph Wright