Message-Id: <9311022207.AA22003@sc.ZIB-Berlin.DE>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de>
Date:         Tue, 2 Nov 93 15:03:02 -0700
From: Michal Jaegermann <michal@GORTEL.PHYS.UALBERTA.CA>
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:      I do not like 'nf' in style names
Status: R


The release of NFSS2 introduced "prefixed" names for various style
files associated with fonts, e.g. nftimes.sty, nfpandor.sty, etc.  I
personally feel that this is a gross mistake and recently had some
exchange of letters with Rainer Schoepf on this topic.  I will try
below shortly present both sides of the argument.  If I misunderstood
something in his stand, then undoubltely I will be corrected pretty
fast. :-)  We are both interested what are opinions of others on that
matter.

My most serious objection is about backward compatibility.  I know
that NFSS2 includes also files like times.sty, which loads
nftimes.sty, but this makes a lot of noise, including threats that
this particular times.sty is going to disappear in not so distant
future.  I do not think that forcing users to dabble with their
existing documents is a good idea to introduce a new version of a
software.  Apparently trivial matter of slightly modifying your
document to conform to "new" style names is not so trivial if you deal
with an existing archive which holds a substantial number of such
documents and which could be processed automatically.  It also makes
not so (La)TeX fluent users and system administrators much more
reluctant to upgrade their systems.  In "sysadmin" class I include
here both owners of sigle-user machines and maintainer of multi user
facilities.  The later are less likely to know anything about TeX and
are, understandably, much more cautious in any system changes,
althouth the former also include many which follow "if ain't broke,
don't fix it" principle and tend to regard any new warning as a sign
that something went broke.  As a result we have around surprisingly
many installations running long obsolete versions of TeX and things
like nftimes.sty vs. times.sty only help to perpetuate this
indefinitely.  I will also have problems like this: for this my
particular corespondent, which uses quite a bit of TeX - but only in a
"black box" mode and is afraid to touch anything - and is located at
the other end of a possibly quite long wire, should I use now 'nf...'
variant or not?  I know surprisingly many folks like that.

Rainer thinks that there is too many variants of 'times.sty' floating
around and if a wrong one will be used things will break and this is
even worse.  New names will help to prevent this from happening.  My
position is that of course there is many variants of 'times.sty',
because they are used with different system setups.  In my opinion
this is a Good Thing(!!), since it allow to insulate your "naive" user
from what is going under-the-hood and this is exactly what all this
game is about.  There are also many variants of 'latex.tex' and not
exactly compatible in every single aspect and in each direction.  If
you will start to mix-and-match files from different releases things
WILL break and sometimes they indeed do, as we all know perfectly well
from questions in comp.text.tex.  I do not think that there is a way
to prevent that, although Rainer can be tired answering questions
related to this issue.  On the other hand, if you are starting to
write more complicated style files, then you are expected to know at
least basic rules of the game and you should be able to differentiate
between various variation on the same theme.

My next contention is that we all hope to see days when "New FSS" will
become "Very Old and Tired FSS".  If this will happen, then names like
'nftimes.sty' will sound somewhat stupid.  Expecting that with times
these names will aquire a tinge of a "Nieuw Amsterdam" is maybe a bit
too optimistic. :-)  Here Rainer tends to agree and he thinks that
names like 'ltimes.sty', with 'l' for LaTeX can be used (if I did not
mis-interpreted something).  Tad better, but this does not address
points raised above.  Besides, '.sty' suffix is generally associated
with LaTeX anyway - few assorted files from AMS-TeX notwithstanding.

The last, but not the least point.  Quite a few OS-es is limited to
eight characters in a base part of file names (MS-DOS is one of these,
but not the only one).  Taking effectively away 25% of available
letters from that meagre allocation does not seem to me to be a very
good idea.  Rainer thinks that this is not an issue, since names like
'nftimes' and 'nfncs' fit and 'nfpandor' is loosing only one letter.
I contend that when more various fonts will be used these six
character names will become very constraining.  Even right now, can
somebody tell me how I am supposed to fit into this scheme, for
example, 'mathtime.sty'?  'nfmthtme.sty'??  Shudder!!  You need an old
Fortran mind to do that. :-)  BTW - does anybody know of the
corresponding file in question which works with NFSS2?

So what do you think?

Michal Jaegermann
michal@gortel.phys.ualberta.ca
ntomczak@vm.ucs.ualberta.ca