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LaTeX2e is, if I don't make any mistake, the successor of LaTeX 2.09, and was published in 1994 (I was 4 year old !). My question is very simple : why has called it LaTeX2e and not, for example LaTeX 2.10 ?

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    3 was already taken and it seemed a big update for a .01 version increment – David Carlisle Feb 13 '15 at 23:03
  • 3 was taken? latex-project.org/guides/ltx3info.pdf refers to 1995 as first reference. – Maïeul Feb 13 '15 at 23:08
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    That document dates from 1995, but I joined the project around the time of the 1992 DANTE meeting in Hamburg and there was already a working LaTeX3 format at that time. a year or two before we started working on 2e. – David Carlisle Feb 13 '15 at 23:23
  • Whatever David say ...What do you expect? Do not forget that the fauna inhabiting LaTeX is mainly people obsessed with mathematics and beautiful typography. The last 25 years the newer versions of TeX are always the Archimedes' constant pi. Thus, the occurrence of Addison-Wesley or someone (I do not kown) to include in the logo the beautiful greek letter epsilon with evident allusion to the Euler's number was a irresistible idea (I liked too). – Fran Feb 14 '15 at 12:41
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    @Fran no Metafont is converging on Euler's e: This is METAFONT, Version 2.7182818 in the way TeX is converging towards pi. The e in latex2e is representing an epsilon, the traditional notation for a small increment. – David Carlisle Feb 14 '15 at 17:51
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As Frank says in his interview

Although LaTeX2e already addressed most, if not all, of the deficiencies identified in the first decade of LaTeX 2.09 use, it was originally thought that LaTeX2e would only be an intermediate step towards a LaTeX 3 version

So that really is the name 2-e or 2-epsilon, a small step towards 3.

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  • Isn't the epsilon/e business something to do with Addison-Wesley? – Joseph Wright♦ Feb 14 '15 at 8:23
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    @JosephWright Yes, or at least it was they who originally suggested that a .01 version increase wasn't a very good hook to advertise a major new system. – David Carlisle Feb 14 '15 at 10:27

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