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Date:         Mon, 12 Feb 90 09:15:20 MET
Reply-To: Victor Eijkhout <U641000@HNYKUN11.uucp>
Sender: LaTeX-L Mailing list <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.uucp>
From: Victor Eijkhout <U641000@HNYKUN11.bitnet>
Subject:      LaTeX and catcodes (sections and footnotes)
To: Rainer Schoepf <BK4@DHDURZ1.uucp>
Status: R
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X-UID: 7


Hello,

LaTeX is somewhat careless about catcodes treatment. My favourite
way of phrasing this is
    ``You can't write a book about LaTeX in LaTeX''
Explanation: the section command takes its argument as macro
parameter, whence it is not possible to have verbatim text
in a section heading. So you can't say
    \section{And what \verb=\else= had you to learn?} %Ni\copyright o

Of course only a minority of people writes _about_ TeX, but
here at the university the Greek style of mr. Levi (mod sp) is used,
and the other day the TeX person from the computing centre asked my why
it wasn't possible to have greek text in footnotes. That turned out
to be the same problem. Note that the Plain \footnote _can_ handle
catcode changes.

And after 15 minutes of `ijsbeering' through the house, I knew that
I could do verbatim in section headings too: suppose
    \def\section#1\par{... \SectionStyle #1 ...}
is given, then
   \newbox\@verbox
   \def\@verbatize#1#2{\setbox\@verbox=\hbox\bgroup
       \def\par{\egroup#1\unhbox\@verbox\par}#2\ignorespaces}
   \let\ssection=\section
   \def\section{\@verbatize\ssection\SectionStyle}
does the job.
Extension to LaTeX syntax is trivial (use \aftergroup).
It's just that I prefer the \par-delimiting.

So. Can anyone think of a reason why LaTeX shouldn't be a bit
more permissive of catcode stunts?


Victor Eijkhout                     Department of Mathematics
                                    University of Nijmegen
                                    Toernooiveld 5
  "Far out in the uncharted         6525 ED Nijmegen, the Netherlands
   backwaters of the unfash-
   ionable end of the               +31 80  61 3169
   western spiral arm               (switchboard: 61 1111)
   of the galaxy"
                                    u641000@HNYKUN11.BITNET