Message-Id: <9211252104.AA00732@sc.zib-berlin.dbp.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
In-Reply-To:  Your message of "Fri,
              20 Nov 92 12:21:15 +0100."
              <m0msXlq-0000MsC@arbi.informatik.uni-oldenburg.de>
Date:         Mon, 23 Nov 92 21:36:02 +0100
From: Lutz Birkhahn <lutz@BISUN.NBG.SUB.ORG>
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: Indexing
Status: R


Tarjei T. Jensen wrote:

> How would a LaTeX3 user tell the indexing program how to sort? E.g. if I
> were an English speaker I might want to sort \aa{} as a, but as a Norwegian I
> would want it in its proper place after \ae{} and \o{}. Since these things
> tend to depend on the document it would be nice if one could specify these
> things in the document itself.

Yes, I think an \indexstyle{norwegian} or something like \indexstyle{din} for
german documents conforming to DIN standard would be fine. MakeIndex should
then load the appropriate index style (see [International] MakeIndex 3.0.?
for index styles).

> BTW. How is the size of a page decided? Let's say that I have this CD-ROM with
> 15000 LaTeX documents and want to print them. How do I set up things so that I
> automagically get A4 pages when I need them?

The only reasonable location for specifying the paper size is the document
style (or perhaps the style option), like \documentstyle[a4]{article}. I admit
it would be desirable to have the paper size be independent of the document,
but in many cases you cannot completely separate form and content. Everyone
who has ever added an A4 style option to a document will have noticed some
over/underfull h/vboxes or similar things. Think of the words from Don Knuth
who rewrites his paragraphs until they can be formatted well. I am sure it
would need a substantial work to reformat the TeXbook to A4 paper size (not-
withstanding the typographical objections against A4 paper size, e.g. by
Jan Tschichold, "Willkuerfreie Massverhaeltnisse der Buchseite und des Satz-
spiegels", engl.: "Non-arbitrary proportions of page and type area"; see also
the a4-9 document style option by Joachim Schrod). In a well-designed layout
paper size and page size are only two of many related parameters, ie. you have
to change many many other values if you want to print on a different paper size.

> I think an mechanism for selecting
> these sort of defaults should be included into LaTeX3. How about a using a
> scheme with multiple default.sty files? E.g. first do the one in TEX_INPUTS
 and
> lastly the one in the current directory. In other words; first the site
 specific
> version and then the personal (document) specific version. The default.sty
 would
> contain default documentstyle options and spacing, etc.

Imagine the confusion: on every site you get another document! That would be a
huge step backwards in document portability. Not to mention the disadvantages
of an operating system dependent solution like yours. Some OSs do not even know
the concept of a "current directory"!

--
Lutz Birkhahn (Germany)   email: lutz@bisun.nbg.sub.org (don't use another!)
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