The previous version of LaTeX<#14#><#14#> was known as LaTeX~2.09. Over the
years many extensions have been developed for LaTeX. This is, of
course, a sure sign of its continuing popularity but it has had one
unfortunate result: incompatible LaTeX<#15#><#15#> formats came into use at
different sites. This included `standard LaTeX~2.09', LaTeX<#16#><#16#> built
with the <#17#>New Font Selection Scheme<#17#>~(NFSS), SLiTeX, AmSLaTeX,
and so on. Thus, to process documents from various places, a site
maintainer was forced to keep multiple versions of the LaTeX<#18#><#18#>
program. In addition, when looking at a source file it was not always
clear for which format the document was written.
To put an end to this unsatisfactory situation, LaTeX2e<#19#><#19#> has been
produced; it brings all such extensions back under a single format and
thus prevents the proliferation of mutually incompatible dialects of
LaTeX~2.09. With LaTeX2e<#20#><#20#> the `new font selection scheme' is
standard and, for example, <#21#>amsmath<#21#> (formerly the AmSLaTeX<#22#><#22#>
format) or <#23#>slides<#23#> (formerly the SLiTeX<#24#><#24#> format) are simply
extension packages, all working with the same base format.
The introduction of a new release also made it possible to add a small
number of often-requested features and to make the task of writing
packages and classes simpler.