Message-Id: <9210040735.AA00623@sc.zib-berlin.dbp.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
Date:         Sun, 4 Oct 92 08:25:07 +0100
From: "Chris Rowley -- OU, UK (R01/Maths)" <C.A.Rowley@OPEN.AC.UK>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
To: Multiple recipients of <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
Subject:      Re: Letter style
Status: R


I should like to add my personal support to Don's plea to enhance
rather than drop LaTeX's ability to produce documents such as memos,
letters, and other "small but complex documents".

In terms of "documents produced" my heaviest use of LaTeX is to
produce such things.  Also, until the advent of e-mail and probably
for some time yet, we mathies actually put maths formulas (even
commutative diagrams) into our letters (even those to friends!).

A large proportion of my acsdemic colleagues also use LaTeX for all
their letters and memos.  This is because all they have to do is type
in the text, all the layout (logo and everything) is already set up;
this was not, of course, easy to set up in 2.09...but that is (one
reason) for producing LaTeX3.

One final point: there are two aspects to "including letter in
LaTeX3".
One is whether the kernel or the basic system has to be enlarged to
enable the kinds of structures etc needed by such documents to be
implemented.  I suspect that the answer is `perhaps a little': this
needs investigation.
The other is whether "standard LaTeX" should be distributed with a
module (which can be loaded as and when required) to support the
design and processing of such document types.  I hope that the
answer is `definitely yes'.

Does it matter how big (in terms of the distributed files) "standard
LaTeX" is?  (I just backed up Windows 3.1 on my PC: 14MB!).


chris