Experimental LaTeX3 Concepts

Release 2026-02-18

Overview

The l3experimental packages are a collection of experimental implementations for aspects of the LaTeX3 kernel, dealing with higher-level ideas such as the Designer Interface. Some of them work as stand alone packages, providing new functionality, and can be used on top of LaTeX2ε with no changes to the existing kernel. Others go further, and redefine LaTeX2ε internals to provide better methods for managing certain constructs. The packages in the collection are under active development and the interfaces may change.

All of the material in the collection requires the LaTeX3 base layer package l3kernel. The two packages must be installed in matching versions: if you update l3experimental, make sure that l3kernel is updated at the same time.

Currently included in the CTAN release of l3experimental are the following bundles:

• l3draw
• xcoffins

l3draw

This module provides a code-level interface for constructing drawings. The interfaces are heavily inspired by the pgf layer of the widely-used TikZ system.

xcoffins

A coffin is a 'box with handles': a data structure which comprises both a TeX box and associated information to allow controlled typesetting. The xcoffins package provides a high-level interface for manipulating coffins. This is supported by the lower-level l3coffins package, which provides the data structure.

Issues

The issue tracker for LaTeX3 is currently located on GitHub.

The LaTeX Project

Development of LaTeX3 is carried out by The LaTeX Project.

Copyright (C) 1998-2004,2008-2012,2014-2026 The LaTeX Project
http://latex-project.org/
All rights reserved.