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]) Date: 13 Dec 89 15:06:19 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: 4 Nico isn't able to find his original message to me, so I'm resubmitting it in his name. By the way, it seems that my last message produced some missunderstandings: We want to make the FROM field the sender and not the list because this will cut down the the amount of mail which is of no interest to others. It should not mean that you shouldn't send your contributions, meanings etc. to the list but often it might be better to discuss specific points first in direct correspondence and then send agreements or disagreements to the list. I'm not sure that this is the right way --- time will tell --- but reading mail on this machine is a time consuming business (I have to receive every file by hand) and I don't think it will help if there is to much traffic. But you're welcome to express a different opinion. Greetings Frank --------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Mon, 13 Nov 89 20:47 MET From: "Nico (Poppelier@Hutruu51.Bitnet)" Subject: With LaTeX into the nineties ... (and some champagne of course) To: pzf5hz@DRUEDS2.BITNET X-VMS-To: IN%"pzf5hz@drueds2" Comments: This mail was sent from cluster RUUNSC using PMDF V3.0 Date: 13 November Frank, I'm glad you give me the opportunity to write down some of my thoughts on LaTeX in the future, and to respond to your article `With LaTeX into the Nineties'. The text of the update section shows out that my version of your article is indeed the most recent one. I'll tell you something about myself first. - assisted with/taught LaTeX to secretaries, students and scientific staff in the physics department of the University of Utrecht. - taught document style design course at first meeting of NTG. - wrote Ph.D. thesis with document style of own design - member of NTG workgroup 13, with main task: create document styles for and solve problems with (La)TeX used for Dutch documents - Spring 1989: worked at Elsevier Science Publishers' on project centered around SGML in the journal publishing business. Main idea: accept compuscripts, convert these to and edit them in SGML, and produce output for proof reading and, eventually, for real publishing. Allowed compuscript types: just LaTeX at the moment. Output back end for SGML: LaTeX. My part: - think about the conversion process; - persuade them not to use plain TeX, with their own macro package or one of the many packages from USA institutes, but LaTeX (this took some time, but I succeeded); - create document styles for two of their journals. Because of my work at Elsevier I'm convinced that SGML will become very important, and I think SGML should have some influence on LaTeX developments. 1. Making LaTeX 3.0 smaller is logical: it still has to run on Atari ST's and PC's. Adding AMSTeX functionality could unite two different groups of LaTeX users: (a) mathematicians and (b) all others. LaTeX is a bit weak on the mathematical environments. I've read your articles in TUGboat: I agree with your suggestions for a new font scheme. 2. Added functionality for \@startsection. All requests are taken from problems Victor or I ran into while creating document styles. I know this is nothing more than `I want LaTeX to do this and I want it to do that ...' but it's on my list nevertheless. 2a. add white space between section number and section title as parameter; now 1em, hardwired into latex.tex. A better scheme would be: IF parameter >0: white space between section number and section title ELSE |parameter| = total space of section number and white with section number flush left FI The Dutch document styles feature 1.______Section title 1.1_____Subsection title 1.1.1___Subsubsection title instead of 1.__Section title 1.1__Subsection title 1.1.1__Subsubsection title 2b. add extra parameter that indicates text/symbol before section number: say you want section titles to look like `\S 1. SECTION TITLE'. 2c. in the beginning, it is not quite clear how to get centered, flush-left or flush-right headings. If you add the appropriate declarations after the font specification in one of the \@startsection parameters, you see that it works, amazingly. This is a documentation matter. 2d. the possibility to gobble the title. In some Elsevier journals \appendix \section{First appendix} should yield Appendix A. centered on the page and nothing more. 2e. \chapter and \part are not part of the sectional-unit hierarchy created with \@startsection calls, and are rather messy parts of the document styles, I find. 3. Referencing. In the SGML DTD created by the Association of American Publishers, which acts as basis for DTD's of various European publishers, references to numbered items are not just one tag like in LaTeX -- \label and \ref, plus \bibitem[...] and \cite -- but separate for every part: \figref, \tabref, \eqref, ... LaTeX also lacks a footnote reference \fnref. 4. Logical concepts in, e.g., `article' style. If you try to convert LaTeX to SGML you run into trouble with the front matter: just \title - \author - \date is not enough. You should at least have \title{...} \author{...} \address{...} \and \author{...} \address{...} \and \collaboration{...} \address{...} i.e. separate addresses and multi-author groups, and \title{...} \author{... list of authors with references \addref[KEY] to list of addresses} \begin{addresses} \item[KEY-1] address-1 \item[KEY-2] address-2 ... \end{addresses} For some journals a document-style designer has to add commands for various dates (received, accepted, ...), and things like a keyword environment (scientific journals). 5. In SGML commands, `tags', can have attributes, i.e. parameters that can be optional or compulsory, that can appear in any order, and for which a default value or list of possible values can be specified. I'm not going to say that LaTeX must have the same, but this matter is worth looking into. 6. Page-style definition is not quite clear to the user -- that's why people make things like `fancyheadings.sty' -- but I wonder if the user SHOULD understand it. It seems to me that LaTeX users on the average want to deal with the layout details themselves, quite contrary to Leslie's whole idea. On the other hand: if you allow page dimensions to be altered with simle LaTeX commands, then why not the page headers? 7. Meta styles. Just of list of meta styles -- an incomplete one maybe. 7a. Article: independent articles to be published. 7b. Proceedings, Journal: many article put together, with an author index, a title index and a table of contents. 7c. Book: something with -- numbered and un-numbered -- chapters, a table of contents and one bibliography; variations for house-style or theses. 7d. Report: something with chapters, an abstract, and one bibliography for the whole report or maybe one bibliography per chapter. 7e. Letter 7f. Memo: small documents like written report of a meeting. 8.Output routine. Since you are writing an article for TUGboat on multi-column layout, I can mention some extra requirements for formatting journals with LaTeX that I ran into: 8a. n-column layout with n>2 8b. a new kind of break instruction, for n=2, that allows you to do --------------------- --------------------- | aaaaaaa | aaaaaaa | | aaaaaaa | bbbbbbb | | aaaaaaa | aaaaaaa | | aaaaaaa | bbbbbbb | | aaaaaaa | aaaaaaa | | aaaaaaa | bbbbbbb | --------------------- | aaaaaaa | bbbbbbb | HHHHHHHHH | instead of | aaaaaaa bbbbbbb | --------------------- | aaaaaaa | bbbbbbb | | bbbbbbb | bbbbbbb | | | bbbbbbb | | bbbbbbb | bbbbbbb | | HHH | bbbbbbb | | bbbbbbb | bbbbbbb | | HHHHH | bbbbbbb | | bbbbbbb | bbbbbbb | | bbbbbbb | bbbbbbb | --------------------- --------------------- where `aaaaaaa' is the last part of an article, `bbbbbbb' the start of a new one, and `HHHHHHH' the header. 9. One- and two-column floats in two-column formatting. One-column floats and two-column floats are separate classes and only the order within one class is respected by the output routine. Simply put: you can get figure 3 BEFORE figure 2, if one of them is one-column and the other two-column. 10. Bibliography. Include tools for some of the useful things in, e.g., AIP.sty, such as collapsing citations into ranges. 11. Parametrization of words like `Figure' and 'Chapter' in document styles. Extremely logical to Europeans -- think about the multi-lingual EG!. Leslie refused to implement this when he was asked in TeXhax. WG 13 is working on a BABEL.sty, a pan-European version of Hubert Partl's (HP knows and agrees) GERMAN.sty, that solves this. Our own Dutch document styles parametrize these terms. 12. More than just the American convention for quoting: ` ... ' and `` ... '' is not enough. Guess I had more to say than I thought! It's a mixture of all kinds of things, but maybe you can find some useful things in it. Nico --------------------------------------------------------------------- P.S. Nodename to be used DRUEDS2 (EARN/Bitnet nodename) .... Do not use nodename RUIPC1E (internal use only)