N T S: a New Typesetting System

NTS represents one possible radical approach to the idea of making a successor for TEX. Its underlying them is the complete re-implementation of TEX: The Program in Java. The rst version will be compatible with TEX but the structure of the new program will be as open and modular as possible. At the time when TEX: The Program was written, computer performance and programming technology were very limited in comparison with today. Object orientation and the many other modern features of Java will make many problems easier to solve and will allow for far greater generality. Polymorphic objects will handle dierent font or output formats directly without aecting the rest of the system. The new implementation will provide a platform on which further experimentation can be conducted; such experimentation may aim, for example, to improve typographic quality (e.g. page break optimization) and/or facilitate integration with other systems.