LaTeX, ConTeXt and plain are the most well known TeX formats/macro packages. But there are others, such as Lollipop. What others are out there and are any in use these days anymore?
[Tex/LaTex] List of TeX formats
big-listformat-files
Related Solutions
One, very incredible solution to an ICFP contest was created by Steve Hicks.
He did an amazing job by coding a Mars rover guidance bot.
See: http://sdh33b.blogspot.com/2008/07/icfp-contest-2008.html
He has shared his code and written about it in the above link.
This clearly shows that TeX
is not just for typesetting (although it clearly is best at that!).
In comments I listed all the "latex" formats that got installed by default in my texlive 2012 installation.
texmf-var/web2c/eptex/platex.fmt
texmf-var/web2c/euptex/uplatex.fmt
texmf-var/web2c/luatex/dvilualatex.fmt
texmf-var/web2c/luatex/lualatex.fmt
texmf-var/web2c/pdftex/cslatex.fmt
texmf-var/web2c/pdftex/latex.fmt
texmf-var/web2c/pdftex/mllatex.fmt
texmf-var/web2c/pdftex/pdfcslatex.fmt
texmf-var/web2c/pdftex/pdflatex.fmt
texmf-var/web2c/xetex/xelatex.fmt
One has to be careful though as they are not all "latex" in the sense of being a compiled version of an unmodified latex set of macros.
I believe latex.fmt
and pdflatex.fmt
only differ in that the same latex.ltx
file was dumped with tex and pdftex respectively. (Actually latex.fmt
is these days dumped with pdftex in dvi etex mode rather than classic tex) But for example cslatex
is a different format, made by compiling the tex macros in
/usr/local/texlive/2012/texmf-dist/tex/cslatex/base/cslatex.ini
This file makes some small number of definitions setting a non standard encoding regime if I recall correctly, and then inputs the standard latex. This is all above board and as expected, you can do just about anything you want with the latex sources except call a changed copy latex (and if you read the small print you can even do that if you claim you must) pdfcslatex.fmt
is of course the same source as this, but dumped with pdftex.
I'd need to check but I think the xelatex and lulatex formats similarly make some small (or not so small) additions to the standard latex macros as well as being dumped by the xetex and luatex engines respectively.
Best Answer
Less known formats
A search in the TeX Live 2009 tree reveals:
Arthur Ogawa is well known for his work on TeX and LaTeX: he is the current maintainer of the RevTeX class, for example. Formats 1, 2 and 4 were directed to physicists, only TeXsis was, as far as I know, rather extensively used.
StarTeX had a quite interesting approach, as its syntax is HTML-like: