These files originated from Help on LaTeX, Version 1.01, 1994-02-09. That, in turn, was derived by Norm Walsh from a VMS help file provided by George Greenwade.
The current files are a revised and extended version created by Dr. Sheldon Green. He added much information, especially about those parts of LaTeX he used most, equations and mathematical symbols. Whether or not commands are fragile has been added in most cases. Illustrative examples of usage have been added in several instances. The hypertext linking has been greatly improved.
Much of the new information was taken from Lamport, "A Document Preparation System:Latex," and from comp.text.tex newsgroup postings.
Since the death of Dr. Green in December 1995, no substantial changes have been to these files. Relatively minor changes have been made affecting page formatting (HTML) of the files or as the result of verifying the external links, but the fundamental content of the pages remains unchanged except where users have notified us of errors.
This set of files is also available as a Unix compressed tar file which can be installed locally to provide faster access.