LaTeX2e--The new LaTeX release

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.