X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil] ["2003" "Sat" "3" "October" "92" "23:34:37" "+0100" "David_Rhead@VME.CCC.NOTTINGHAM.AC.UK" "David_Rhead@VME.CCC.NOTTINGHAM.AC.UK" nil "38" "Letter style" "^Date:" nil nil "10"]) Return-Path: Received: from sc.ZIB-Berlin.DE (serv01) by dagobert.ZIB-Berlin.DE (4.1/SMI-4.0/1.9.92 ) id AA08535; Sat, 3 Oct 92 23:38:47 +0100 Received: from vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de (vm.hd-net.uni-heidelberg.de) by sc.ZIB-Berlin.DE (4.0/SMI-4.0-sc/19.6.92) id AA29907; Sat, 3 Oct 92 23:38:15 +0100 Message-Id: <9210032238.AA29907@sc.zib-berlin.dbp.de> Received: from DHDURZ1 by vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 0622; Sat, 03 Oct 92 23:39:02 CET Received: from DHDURZ1 by DHDURZ1 (Mailer R2.08 R208004) with BSMTP id 0611; Sat, 03 Oct 92 23:38:59 CET Received: from DHDURZ1 by DHDURZ1 (Mailer R2.08 R208004) with BSMTP id 0609; Sat, 03 Oct 92 23:38:56 CET Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project Date: Sat, 3 Oct 92 23:34:37 +0100 From: David_Rhead@VME.CCC.NOTTINGHAM.AC.UK Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project To: Multiple recipients of Subject: Letter style Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 832 [There was some correspondence about letter style a while back (about the internals, as far as I remember). I tried to send the following comment at the time, but was frustrated by mail problems.] Is production of letters something that LaTeX is (or could be made, or should be made) good at? Alternatively, should "the letter market" be left for "wordprocessing software" with mail-merge etc. Many people (including myself) are asking for new facilities in LaTeX 3. It might be worth looking for a few 2.09 things to drop, so that LaTeX 3 won't be "too big". Perhaps support for letter-production is something that could be dropped (subject to any overall commitment to emulation of LaTeX 2.09): * Although it is true that letters have structure, by the time one has read section 3.8 of the book about how to input the structure, one could well have typed an A4 letter in (using an ordinary editor, or a wordprocessor) from mental ideas of structure. I don't think that separation of structure from design is as helpful for a letter as it is for a longer document. In fact, it may give people the idea that "LaTeX is difficult to use", if they think that letter.sty is the only way to produce a letter via LaTeX. * Anyone desperate to use LaTeX for letter-production could use something like article.sty (and may even find it easier that using letter.sty). There are enough things in flushright, etc., to get things in the right places. * A reasonable way to organize a mathematical letter is to send "a paper" with a covering letter. The paper can be done with something like article.sty. The covering letter can be done on a typewriter, wordprocessor, handwritten, ... Perhaps LaTeX should concentrate on thing it is likely to be good at: journal articles, books, conference proceedings, etc., rather than "office documents". I wouldn't mind if LaTeX 3 had no equivalent of letter.sty. David Rhead