Photo film history in the last 20 years

The deal is, I was doing professional photography 1975-1980 as a starving student. Eventually, a different career evolved, and now I'm a well-established graphic designer/art director in the movie industry. My point is, I am no longer starving, have been dreaming about doing the kind of photography I always WANTED to do, and now I can.... medium & large-format B/W photos with an artistic bent. What I'm requesting is an overview of what has happened since then. For instance: looks like Kodak & Ilford discontinued Panatomic-X and PanF. How come? There is an entirely new (to me) Kodak line of B/W films - T-Max. Why do they exist and how do they differ from Plus-X, and Tri-X? It seems that even the once-wildly-popular Plus-X is now much deempasized. Should I be hording my old favorites, or have the new films truly outmoded them.... and how so? Thanks! --Doc.

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