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Date:         Mon, 28 May 90 02:10:00 PDT
Reply-To: LaTeX-L Mailing list <LATEX-L%DHDURZ1@unido.bitnet>
From: Don Hosek <DHOSEK@HMCVAX.bitnet>
Subject:      Thoughts on compatibility between versions and other things
To: Rainer Schoepf <BK4@DHDURZ1.uucp>
Status: R
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X-UID: 118

I personally am very wary of any great incompatibilities between version 2.09 of
LaTeX and 2.10 of LaTeX. In particular, I think that disabling the old way of
doing things, even at the style file level, should be avoided. Consider, for
example, the reluctance expressed by one presenter at last year's TUG conference
to use LaTeX internal macros since they seemed to change their function without
warning between versions of LaTeX (and despite what Leslie might think, the
dates are really not adequate identifiers for what revision LaTeX is on, and I
hope that we can incorporate a simple numeric or alphabetic identifier into the
version number beginning with 2.10--say 2.10 is the first version, 2.10a after
the first release with bug fixes, then 2.10b etc.). I have seen similar disgust
with BibTeX after the major change in the format of .BST file between versions
0.99b and 0.99c. 2.09 will be around to haunt us for a long time (I just saw a
request for amcsc10 earlier today to give you some idea of how infrequently some

TeX files get updated), so we'd better be prepared to deal with its specter.

For example, what of parameters to environments? Well, with the above
consideration in mind, Leslie's suggestion of \begin{name}[parameter specs] is
right out. If suddenly something like \begin{theorem}[Fermat]...\end{theorem}
doesn't work in LaTeX 2.10, people won't switch. Frank's suggestion is better,
but we must remember that being able to say \begin{theorem|name=Fermat} is not
an excuse to be rid of the old syntax. In general, our changes should be very
much like those Knuth introduced into TeX; if you don't know about them, it
shouldn't hurt you (or if it does, it should be minor and only affect unusual
cases).

We keep wandering off on tangents in this discussion, which is not bad in
itself, but little progress is being made (I'm kind of glad nobody took me up on

the quarter bet now). People want to know how to do style files in LaTeX, and
aside from a specification of Frank's new start section macro, I haven't seen
anything concrete towards that end.

Users undoubtedly are quite put off by the state of things in the LaTeX world.
I've put off installing TeX 3.0 until this week partially because I've been
waiting for the new version of lplain.tex that includes \newlanguage and the
other necessary definitions for TeX 3.0. I'll spend a little time this week
putting together one that checks to see if it's running TeX 3.0 and if so adds
the appropriate definitions and send it to this list. If Leslie can officially
adopt it, my postings to comp.text.tex on how to install LaTeX under TeX 3.0 can

get considerably shorter and there will doubtless be great rejoicing. There
still is no official word on internationalization. This should definitely be
considered for LaTeX 2.10 (has it even been touched on in this group?); TUGboat
10#3 and 11#1 have adequate proof that there is a desire.

-dh