Directory macros/latex/required/l3kernel
LaTeX3 Programming Conventions
Release 2024-12-09
Overview
The files of the l3kernel
bundle provide an API for TeX programmers with defined syntax conventions, completely separating it from document level syntax. Hence, the commands provided are not intended for use at the document level nor for use in describing design layouts in document class files.
This API provides the foundation on which new additions to the LaTeX kernel and other advanced extensions are built. The programming layer is designed to be loaded as part of LaTeX2ε format building or as a loaded package with plain TeX or other formats.
The syntax and functionality provided by l3kernel
is regarded by the LaTeX team as stable. There may still be changes to some functions, but these will be very minor when compared to the scope of l3kernel
. In particular, no functions will be removed, although some may be deprecated.
Requirements
The l3kernel
bundle requires the ε-TeX extensions and a number of additional 'utility' primitives, almost all of which were first added to pdfTeX. In particular, the functionality equivalent to the following pdfTeX primitives must be available
\ifincsname
\ifpdfprimitive
\pdfcreationdate
\pdfelapsedtime
\pdffiledump
\pdffilemoddate
\pdffilesize
\pdflastxpos
\pdflastypos
\pdfmdfivesum
\pdfnormaldeviate
\pdfpageheight
\pdfpagewidth
\pdfprimitive
\pdfrandomseed
\pdfresettimer
\pdfsavepos
\pdfsetrandomseed
\pdfshellescape
\pdfstrcmp
\pdfuniformdeviate
For ease of reference, these primitives will be referred to as the 'pdfTeX utilities'. With the exception of \expanded
, these have been present in pdfTeX since the release of version 1.40.0 in 2007; \expanded
was added for TeX Live 2019. Similarly, the full set of these utility primitives has been available in XeTeX from the 2019 TeX Live release, and has always been available in LuaTeX (some by Lua emulation). The Japanese pTeX and upTeX gained all of the above (except \ifincsname
) for TeX Live 2019 and \ifincsname
for TeX Live 2020.
Starting from release 2023-05-15, the \expanded
primitive is required. Its slow emulation has been removed.
In addition to the above, engines which are fully Unicode-compatible must provide the functionality of the following primitives, documented in the LuaTeX manual
\Uchar
\Ucharcat
\Umathcode
The existence of the primitive \Umathcode
is used as the marker for Unicode support.
Issues
The issue tracker for LaTeX3 is currently located on GitHub.
The LaTeX Project
Development of LaTeX3 is carried out by The LaTeX Project.
The development team can be contacted by e-mail: <latex-team@latex-project.org>.
Copyright (C) 1998-2012,2015-2024 The LaTeX Project
http://latex-project.org/
All rights reserved.
Download the contents of this package in one zip archive (13.5M).
l3kernel – LaTeX3 programming conventions
The l3kernel bundle provides an implementation of the LaTeX3 programmers’ interface, as a set of packages that run under LaTeX2ε. The interface provides the foundation on which the LaTeX3 kernel and other future code are built: it is an API for TeX programmers. The packages are set up so that the LaTeX3 conventions can be used with regular LaTeX2ε packages.
Package | l3kernel |
Home page | https://www.latex-project.org |
Bug tracker | https://github.com/latex3/latex3/issues |
Repository | https://github.com/latex3/latex3 |
Version | 2024-12-09 |
Licenses | The LaTeX Project Public License 1.3c |
Copyright | 1990–2024 The LaTeX Project |
Maintainer | The LaTeX Project Team |
TDS archive | l3kernel.tds.zip |
Contained in | TeX Live as l3kernel MiKTeX as l3kernel |
Topics | Format LaTeX3 Pre release |
See also | l3backend l3packages l3experimental |