I&#39;ve been on the periphery of TeX for years, as a casual user of LaTeX and also as an implementer of publishing software.  However, I&#39;m afraid I haven&#39;t kept in as close touch as I&#39;d like, and now I find myself trying to absorb a lot in a short time.  I&#39;m trying to choose what software to use in building an XML-&gt;TeX workflow.  <div>
<br></div><div>I&#39;d appreciate any help with the following questions:<div><br></div><div><ol><li>True or False: TeX can be categorized along three orthogonal axes:</li><ol><li>by format (plain TeX, LaTeX, ConTeXt, others?)</li>
<li>by implementation (web2c, pdfTeX/pdfLaTeX, LuaTeX, others?)</li><li>by distribution (MikTeX, TeXLive, MacTeX, others?)<br><br></li></ol><li>True or False: plain TeX and LaTeX(2e) are warhorses ... been around for decades, quirks well known, lots of documentation, etc.<br>
<br></li><li>True or False: ConTeXt is newer, with a lot of built-in features, but still changing quite a bit from build to build.</li></ol><div><br></div></div></div><div>Other comments welcome vis. picking which software to use.  One point is that since the actual TeX input files will be generated programmatically, readability or ease-of-coding is not a factor.  I was going to use plain TeX, but it seems a lot of features like placing text boxes and graphics anywhere, using system fonts, etc. are more available for LaTeX and ConTeXt.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Thank you for any comments!</div><div><br></div><div>-pd</div><div><br></div>