This file describes the Eplain (expanded or extended plain, take your
pick) distribution.  The current version number is at the beginning and
end of `eplain.tex', the beginning of `ChangeLog', and the beginning of
`Makefile' (among other places).

See `INSTALL' for installation and basic usage hints.

`eplain.tex' is the macros.  This file is generated (by the Unix shell
script `merge') from `xeplain.tex' and `btxmac.tex'.  Unless you are
hacking the macros, you should have no need to regenerate the file; just
use the one that's there.  If you do regenerate it, you will need a
`date' program which understands the %B format (GNU date does).

`doc/eplain.texinfo' (`eplain.txi' in the DOS distribution) describes
the features currently provided.  If you think of additional features
that would be useful, or extensions to existing ones, let me know.  I am
interested in providing macros that support formatting, not ones which
do the formatting.  (Which is to say, Eplain is not another LaTeX; I
will not include, say, a macro to produce a chapter heading.)

`doc/eplain.info*' are the Info files resulting from eplain.texinfo,
which GNU Emacs and GNU Info can read (they don't exist in the DOS
distribution).  Emacs 18's texinfo-format-buffer doesn't understand all
the new Texinfo commands.  The makeinfo program, distributed in the
Emacs Lisp reference manual distribution and texinfo2 distribution, and
the Emacs Lisp code in the texinfo2 distribution, does.  You can get
these from any GNU archive.  Or you can just use the provided files.

Here is the line I added to the file `dir', in the top-level Emacs info
directory:
	* Eplain: (eplain).	Expansions to plain TeX.
See the Texinfo manual for more information about Info.

The files in the `test' subdirectory (not present in the DOS
distribution) are what I use for testing.  They also provide examples of
how I intended the macros to be used.

Eplain was written mostly by Karl Berry.  Some ideas were suggested by
Paul Abrahams, who also wrote a few of the macros.  Other macros are
based on ones in The TeXbook.  Steven Smith wrote the commutative
diagram macros.  Oren Patashnik has worked tirelessly on improving the
BibTeX macros.  Philip Taylor wrote the \path macro, starting from an
initial macro by Nelson Beebe.  Nelson also collected the ``TeX names''
which Eplain incorporates.

I have put these macros in the public domain.  Eplain was developed as
part of a book published by Addison-Wesley in early summer, 1990.  The
rest of the macros used for the book are also available electronically
(from ftp.cs.umb.edu:pub/tex/impatient), although the book itself is not
(sigh).


Internet: karl@cs.umb.edu   karl@gnu.ai.mit.edu
UUCP: ...!harvard!umb!karl

If none of those work, you can try:
135 Center Hill Rd.
Plymouth, MA 02360
USA