X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil] ["2306" "Tue" "9" "November" "93" "09:30:47" "CST" "Alex Stark" "jas1@ENGINEERING.CAMBRIDGE.AC.UK" nil "64" "RE: styles and locations" "^Date:" nil nil "11"]) Return-Path: Received: from sc.ZIB-Berlin.DE (mailserv) by dagobert.ZIB-Berlin.DE (4.1/SMI-4.0/24.6.93) id AA08332; Tue, 9 Nov 93 10:37:44 +0100 Received: from vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de (vm.hd-net.uni-heidelberg.de) by sc.ZIB-Berlin.DE (4.1/SMI-4.0-sc/03.06.93) id AA09686; Tue, 9 Nov 93 10:37:38 +0100 Message-Id: <9311090937.AA09686@sc.ZIB-Berlin.DE> Received: from DHDURZ1 by vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 2498; Tue, 09 Nov 93 10:36:19 CET Received: from DHDURZ1 by DHDURZ1 (Mailer R2.08 R208004) with BSMTP id 8589; Tue, 09 Nov 93 10:36:13 CET Received: from DHDURZ1 by DHDURZ1 (Mailer R2.08 R208004) with BSMTP id 8585; Tue, 09 Nov 93 10:36:11 CET Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project Date: Tue, 9 Nov 93 09:30:47 CST From: Alex Stark Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project To: Multiple Recipients of Subject: RE: styles and locations Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 1125 First off, can we forget the idea of using suffixes to identify file types. There are three important reasons for this. 1) Directories listed alphabetically will have all the files with the same prefix together which is very useful; 2) Wildcard operations are, in general, handled better for prefixes; 3) If filenames are too long (and a number of style writers etc do not keep to the 8+3 limitations) suffixes get lost first, so `somethingnf' and `somethinglf' become the same. I do not know whether or not it is because I have set up our (em)TeX installation badly, but our TEXINPUTS directory has 270 files in it. I would really like to be able to divide these into subdirectories. The problem with that is that users' files wouldn't process properly. Therefore I tentatively suggest the following. All LaTeX2e inputs should be placed in subdirectories of TEXINPUTS. Initially the LaTeX3 team would decide the arrangement, later the CTAN maintainers could organise them. Thus everyone should have the same hierarchy. For example: TEXINPUTS\classes \ for main style classes such as ARTICLE \fontsel \ for font selections such as \fontsel \times \fontsel \amssymb \journals\ for journal-specific styles such as \journals\ieee\ trans \journals\agu \ jgr \journals\siam\ \journals\ams \ \pscript \epsf and so on. A document might then start: \documentclass[ % % fontsel/times, journals/iop/jop, pscript/epsf % % ]{classes/report} It seems to me that the few extra characters here are worth it. This is just an idea, but something must be done about those 270 files! /Alex Stark ---------------------------------------------------------------------- J. Alex Stark Signal Processing and Communications Laboratory Christ's College Department of Engineering Cambridge University of Cambridge CB2 3BU Trumpington Street Cambridge, CB2 1PZ, UK email:jas1@uk.ac.cam.eng Tel:[+44]223 3 32767 Fax:[+44]223 3 32662 ----------------------------------------------------------------------