The Lingua Franca of LaTeX (2019)
Summary
The Lingua Franca of LaTeX traces the history and impact of TeX and LaTeX, from Knuth's 1970s typography breakthrough to the modern open-source ecosystem. It covers TeX's design as a minimal, extensible engine, the rise of LaTeX via Lamport, and the evolution of engines such as XeTeX, pdfTeX, and LuaTeX, concluding with LaTeX3 and LaTeX's enduring role in technical publishing.