X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil nil nil nil nil nil nil t nil] [nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil]) Return-Path: Date: 13 Dec 89 15:05:43 UT From: "LaTeX-L Mailing list" Sender: PZF5HZ@RUIPC1E.BITNET.DBP.sc To: "Rainer Schoepf" Subject: LaTeX 2.10 Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 3 Hello folks, this is some sort of opening which was prepared in hast, because my sytem is shutting down in a few minutes and anyway thinks are pretty hectic at the moment here (we are currently changing from Xerox to IBM printers at the EDS and have to deal with a few million lines of print output (channel commands and all)) So please see this as a first greeting to make things a bit clearer. Frank Purpose of this list: The main goals for LaTeX version 2.10 is to provide a new interface for style design. Changes to the user interface are not planned for this version execpt perhaps by providing a few additional commands in certain meta styles. The list is not ment (at least not now) to be a forum to discuss implementation details. As outlined in our talks at Stanford and Karlsruhe we think that it is necessary to define meta styles. A meta style is supposed to define the syntax of a set of user commands and environments which have to be available in all incarnations of this meta style. This means that all document styles which belong to this meta style are fully compatible (i.e. defining exactly the same commands (no more, no less)). It would then be possible to format a document which is taged, let's say, according to the meta style article for publication in any journal which supplies its own incarnation simply by changing the document style in the \documentstyle command. The scond main topic (in my opinion) should be a discussion about generic commands for the style file interface. LaTeX has already a few but probably not enough and probably not with enough flexibilty. Here it might be useful to resent a message by Nico who had already thought about this subject. Questions that I like to discuss first: 1) What sort of meta styles should be defined? (LaTeX defines article, report, book and letter but book and report seems to belong to the same meta style since they are interchangable) One can think of proceedings memos etc. A possible approach to this question might be to scan through the bibtex entries. 2) The next question is: which concepts should be provided in which meta style? As an example a proceeding style should probably inherit all concepts from the article meta style but also include commands for a summary table of contents etc. Rainer and I decided to make relies going only to the sender and not to the whole list because we think otherwise there might be too much mail to get anything useful out of it. Maybe it is a good idea to discuss questions first in smaller circles and then present the results again to the list. I would like to say a bit more but my system is going down in 3 minuts so I have to hurry. Please send me a message if this mail is too much corrupted (me not the list). \bye P.S. Nodename to be used DRUEDS2 (EARN/Bitnet nodename) .... Do not use nodename RUIPC1E (internal use only)