NTS : The Future of TEX ? Wolfgang

Opinions on "the future of T@" cover the entire spectrum, ranging from the defmtive statement by Knuth"My work on developing TEX . . . has come to an end" to proposals that TEX be completely re-written. In this paper, an intermediate position is taken, based on the fundamental premise that any successor to TEX must be 100% backward-compatible, both in terms of its behaviour when presented with a non-extended TEX document, and in terms of its implementation through the medmm of WEB. A mechanism is proposed whereby extensions to TEX may be selectively enabled, and a further mechanism proposed whch would enable conforming documents to determine whch extensions, if any, are supported by a particular implementation. Finally, a proposal is made for an initial extension to TEX whch would have implementation-specific dependencies, and mechanisms are discussed whereby access to such extensions could take place in a controlled manner through the use of implementation-independent and implementation-specific components of a macro library.