TEX 3 Programming Language — a proposed system for TEX macro programming

This paper gives s brief introduction to a new set of programming conventions that have been designed to meet the requirements of implementing large scale TEX macro programming projects such as LATEX. The main features of the system described are: • classification of the macros (or, in LATEX terminology, commands) into LATEX functions and LATEX parameters, and also into modules containing related commands; • a systematic naming scheme based on these classifications; • a simple mechanism for controlling the expansion of a function’s arguments. A system such as this is being used experimentally as the basis for TEX programming within the LATEX3 project. Note that the language is not intended for either document mark-up or style specification. This paper is based on a talk given by David Carlisle in San Francisco, July 1997, but it describes the work of several people: principally Frank Mittelbach and Denys Duchier, together with Johannes Braams, David Carlisle, Michael Downes, Alan Jeffrey, Chris Rowley and Rainer Schöpf.