The NTS and e-TeX Project Home Page

Available Documents:

• The e-TeX Reference Site with the complete release of e-TeX v1 (sources and documentation)
• The e-TeX Reference Site (Local Copy from CTAN)
• The e-TeX Short Reference Manual (for e-TeX v1, October 1996)
• Frequently asked questions (FAQ) (Jan. 1995) from the NTS-L discussion list

• Minutes of the 3rd NTS meeting (Oct. 1994)

e-TeX and NTS: a status report

The NTS project was created under the aegis of DANTE e.V. during a meeting held at Hamburg in 1992; its brief was to investigate the possibility of perpetuating all that is best in TeX whilst being free from the constraints which TeX's author, Prof. Knuth, has placed on its evolution. The group is now investigating both conservative and radical evolutionary paths for TeX-derived typesetting systems, these being respectively e-TeX (extended TeX) and NTS (a New Typesetting System). The group is also concerned that whilst TeX itself is completely stable and uniform across all platforms, the adjuncts which accompany it vary from implementation to implementation and from site to site, and has therefore proposed that a `canonical TeX kit' be specified, which once adopted could safely be assumed to form a part of every TeX installation. Work is now well advanced on the e-TeX project, whilst the group are concurrently involved in identifying the key components of a complete portable TeX system and in investigating sources of funding which will allow the NTS project to become a reality.

Note: Excerpt from the progress report of the NTS group. Appeared in TUGboat 15(1994), No. 3, pp. 353-358 and will be soon available on this WWW server.

NTS Group - History & Meetings:

DANTE'92 (spring 1992, Hamburg, FRG)

Foundation of the NTS project
Technical Director: Rainer Schöpf

DANTE'93 (9.-12. March 1993, Chemnitz, FRG)

Resignation of Rainer Schöpf as Technical Director (he is involved in the LaTeX2e project),
New Technical Director: Phil Taylor

Creation of the NTS-L discussion list (May 1992)

see ``Discussion list about NTS and e-TeX''.

9th DANTE meeting (23./24. Sept. 1993, Kaiserslautern, FRG)

1st NTS meeting

DANTE'94 (16.-18. February 1994, Münster/Westfalen, FRG)

2nd NTS meeting
First running `e-'TeX version - pre-pre-pre-pre-...-alpha.

First e-TeX version (March 1994)

A preliminary e-TeX version 0.95 (alpha) with the extensions and enhancements discussed in Münster, not released.

11th DANTE meeting (13./14. Oct. 1994, Katlenburg-Lindau, FRG)

3rd NTS meeting

• Minutes of the 3rd NTS meeting

DANTE'95 (28. February-3. March 1995, Gießen, FRG)

4th NTS meeting
We are now at "This is e-TeX, Version 3.14159-0.99test" - still an alphatest version, not released.

First e-TeX test version for TeX Implementors (28. July 1995)

Announcement of e-TeX v1.0-beta to the TeX implementors discussion list.

DANTE'96 (27.-29. March 1996, Augsburg, FRG)

4th NTS meeting
Final discussion and "bug" fixes for first e-TeX release, discussion about e-TeX v2.

15th DANTE meeting (10./11. October 1996, Hamburg, FRG)

Announcement of e-TeX v1 during the meeting.

Release of e-TeX v1 (13. November 1996)

Formally First Release of e-TeX to the TeX world.

Discussion List about NTS and e-TeX:

For discussions about the concept of NTS and e-TeX the mail discussion list nts-l was initiated. To subscribe, send an e-mail to

listserv@vm.urz.uni-heidelberg.de

subscribe nts-l Vorname Zuname

Discussion List Archive:

The correspondence on the nts-l list are automatically archived on ftp://ftp.th-darmstadt.de/pub/tex/documentation/nts-l. A copy of this archive can be found in CTAN:tex-archive/digests/nts-l.

A short overview of the discussions and NTS ideas can be found in the frequently asked questions (FAQ) list.