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, 8 Jun 90 14:59:00 PDT
Reply-To: LaTeX-L Mailing list <LATEX-L%DHDURZ1@unido.bitnet>
From: Don Hosek <DHOSEK@HMCVAX.bitnet>
Subject:      Re: Front matter definitions
To: Rainer Schoepf <BK4@DHDURZ1.uucp>
Status: R
X-Status: 
X-Keywords:                  
X-UID: 124

>If the date is printed at the end of the article, is it "frontmatter"?
>Or is there a a "backmatter" that is different from the "frontmatter"
>date, which is presumably different from the "middlematter" date that
>appears on each page of a draft version?

>Title, date, etc.  logically serve as parameters to the "document"
>environment.  To be consistent, the format should be

>  \begin{document|author="J. D. Sallinger"|lastname="Sallinger"%
>                 |email="jds@random.com"...}

>No, I don't particularly like that.  Which seems to indicate that I
>might not particularly like having to write

>  \begin{theorem|name="Zorn's Second Lemma"|format="compact"|...}

>Let's come up with a single, consistent parameter mechanism that will
>unify things; let's not spawn a host of \frontm, \backm, \middlem, ....
>commands.

While I didn't make it explicit, my use of the term "frontmatter"
didn't require that the output be printed at the front. Perhaps
another term would be better, but since most document styles
place "frontmatter" at the front and "frontmatter is easy enough
to remember...

A good example of "frontmatter" placed in different places in the
document occurs in the letter document style. When I teach
letters in my LaTeX classes, I claim that \signature is in the
same class as \author and \title (hmm... \frontm{signature}{Joe
Fish} _is_ a bit awkward seeming. Maybe another name _would_ be
in order).

The problem is not that we need \backm so much as we need to
eliminate things like \makesignature (or for that matter, is
there any special reason why \begin{document} doesn't
automatically do a \maketitle? It could fairly easily omit that
step if \@title is unknown and I'm hard-pressed to think of a
case where the title isn't the first printed material or \title
is specified and \maketitle isn't and even if this were the case,
one could just add a notitle d.s. option).

-dh