Message-Id: <199208220125.AA04147@mail.cs.tu-berlin.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L%DHDURZ1@tubvm.cs.tu-berlin.de>
Date:         Sat, 22 Aug 92 03:08:58 CET
From: Don Hosek <DHOSEK@HMCVAX.CLAREMONT.EDU>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L%DHDURZ1@tubvm.cs.tu-berlin.de>
To: Multiple recipients of <LATEX-L%DHDURZ1@tubvm.cs.tu-berlin.de>
Subject:      Re: discription
Status: R


-> BTW, why is \description defined by the document style and not
-> latex.tex?

-is this important? I would ask the other way around, why is itemize
-inside latex? But both questions do not lead anywhere at the moment.

But they do: the location of the definition of a command says
something (or, more accurately, should say something) about
whether this is a command that is likely to be defined
differently in different document styles or not. This is why,
e.g., \section is defined by *.sty and not latex.tex. The
question does lead somewhere: is there something special about
the definition of \description vs. \itemize or \enumerate or is
this another anachronism (and there are plenty)? Furthermore, it
indicates a possible incosistency to be smoothed out in LaTeX 3.0
or a possible pitfall to be watched for in LaTeX 3.0.

-dh

[Someone who expects to see LaTeX 3.0 someday, but doesn't want
to see the LaTeX user community suffocate holding its breath for
the blessed event.]