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: Fri, 25 May 90 08:52:56 -0700 Reply-To: LaTeX-L Mailing list From: Leslie Lamport To: Rainer Schoepf Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 113 On the subject of front matter. Frank writes: I have nearly never seen a document starting with something different (i.e., different in a different order) than \maketitle \tableofcontents \listoffigures Here is what my most recent research report has: page i: Title author date page iii: copyright notice page iv: author's abstract page v: perspective (an abstract written by a reviewer) page vii: table of contents It took me a little time--perhaps 15 minutes--to format the first such report 5 years ago. For each new report I copy the commands from a previous report and do some cut and paste editing. This takes perhaps 5 minutes. Yes, it would be nice to have a style file to produce that front matter from declarations. That would save me 15 or 20 minutes a year. Maybe I could take a vacation in Majorca with the time I would save. Unfortunately: * The title page usually contains a cartoon. The precise position of the title on the title page depends on the size of the cartoon, so it varies with each document. * The author's abstract and perspective usually go on the same page (page v). For the recent document, the perspective was too long for it and the abstract to fit on a single page, so the series editor and I decided to use adjoining pages. On other documents, I have been able to fit them on the same page by formatting tricks, such as using smaller fonts and making the page slightly too long. I think that about half of my reports have required some sort of special formatting to handle the abstract and perspective. Thus, if the formatting were embedded in a style file, instead of simple formatting inside the document, I would have had to make a new style file. I expect that the extra work would have been more than the 15 minutes per year that I would have saved. (Goodbye, Majorca.) ---- Most technical reports don't have as complicated front matter as the SRC research reports. But I expect that no two technical report series have exactly the same formatting requirements. Even if most of them can be accomodated by a document style, most organizations will not have people competent to write such a style. How are the users at those organizations supposed to produce their tech reports? It is therefore imperative that commands such as \tableofcontents be available to allow a naive user to produce the document's front matter in whatever format he chooses. I have no objection to some simple, standard method of producing front matter being built into the standard document styles, so long as it's easy enough to use. However, I strongly believe that the more sophisticated it is--that is, the more things it does automatically--the less useful it will be. A sophisticated default will satisfy the needs of the people writing that default, and no-one else. Thus, it will be a grand waste of time. I have no objection if the implementors want to waste their own time. I do object to wasting space in the manual. So, whatever is devised must be very easy to explain. Leslie Lamport