The previous version of LATEX<#13#><#13#> 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<#14#><#14#> formats came into use at
different sites. This included `standard LATEX~2.09', LATEX<#15#><#15#> built
with the New Font Selection Scheme~(), , ,
and so on. Thus, to process documents from various places, a site
maintainer was forced to keep multiple versions of the LATEX<#17#><#17#>
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<#18#><#18#> 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<#19#><#19#> the `new font selection scheme' is
standard and, for example, amstex (formerly the <#21#><#21#>
format) or slides (formerly the <#23#><#23#> 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.