ALaTeX Distribution Guide 21 January 1996 Matt Swift WELCOME TO ALaTeX! This file is a brief guide to the ALaTeX document preparation system, which is a small but useful modification of the LaTeX document preparation system. You may produce a discussion of the goals of ALaTeX by processing the file `metaclas.tex' with LaTeX. The paper is based on parts of the article "Modularity in LaTeX" by Matt Swift in TUGboat vol. 16 no. 3. ALaTeX is NOT part of the LaTeX distribution. It is maintained exclusively by Matt Swift , NOT by the LaTeX maintainers. The ALaTeX distribution will probably work with all LaTeX versions, but it has been tested starting with the December 1995 release. If a change in the LaTeX kernel requires a change in ALaTeX that makes it incompatible with earlier LaTeX kernels, I will increase the major version number. If I make an drop-in improvement to ALaTeX, I will update the minor version number. The ALaTeX version is displayed on the screen every time ALaTeX is invoked with a reminder that ALaTeX is not standard LaTeX. The file 00readme.txt in the LaTeX distribution contains information about the LaTeX distribution. Here is a brief description of some of the ALaTeX files: - ainstall.txt describes how to install ALaTeX and its documentation. - metaclas.cfg is the standard ALaTeX metaclass. - alatex.tex documents ALaTeX and its standard metaclass. - alatex.ltx is a patch to the LaTeX kernel. - amanifst.txt lists all the files in the ALaTeX distribution with one line of information about their contents. - abugs.txt describes how to submit a bug report for ALaTeX. - COPYING is a copy of the GNU General Public License. - Makefile is a Unix makefile for building and installing ALaTeX on Unix systems. COPYRIGHT ========= The ALaTeX files in this distribution are copyright 1995 Matt Swift . All rights reserved. WARRANTY ======== There is no warranty for ALaTeX. See the file COPYING for details. DISTRIBUTION CONDITIONS ======================= ALaTeX may be distributed under the conditions of the GNU General Public License, which is in the file COPYING. ACKNOWLEDGMENT ============== The ALaTeX format that the files in this distribution will generate represents a VERY small modification of the LaTeX format, whose source files are copyright 1993-1995 the LaTeX3 project and the individual authors: Leslie Lamport Johannes Braams David Carlisle Alan Jeffrey Frank Mittelbach Chris Rowley Rainer Schoepf The authors of the original LaTeX files deserve all of the credit for the functionality of ALaTeX. The author of ALaTeX added only the smallest of contributions, and thanks the original authors for writing the files and for distributing them under conditions which allowed him to legally make and distribute his addition.