Message-Id: <199312160955.AA04056@mail.cs.tu-berlin.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
Date:         Thu, 16 Dec 93 00:35:38 +0100
From: Frank Mittelbach <MITTELBACH@mzdmza.zdv.uni-mainz.de>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
To: Multiple Recipients of <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: newsymbol
Status: R


> Subj:	RE: \newsymbol

> David Carlisle writes:
> %>
> %>\begin{decl}
> %>|\DeclareMathSymbol| \m{symbol} \m{type} \m{sym font name} \m{position}
> %>\end{decl}
> %>
>
> Yes, I had spotted this, and I do agree that \newsymbol was a bad idea in AMS-
> LaTeX, but essential for compatibility with AMSTeX.

> However...what are we meant to do, *if* we adopt NFSS2, with all those
> documents which---legitimately---used \newsymbol explicitly?  Has the AMS
> shot itself in the foot with this one?

i don't think so, although the code could be improved. In any case at
the moment amsfonts.sty coming with NFSS2 contains:

\gdef\newsymbol#1#2#3#4#5{%
    \warn@rel@i\newsymbol\DeclareMathSymbol
    \@ifdefinable#1{%
       \edef\next@
         {\ifcase #2 \or
            \hexnumber@\symAMSa\or
            \hexnumber@\symAMSb\fi}%
       \ifx\next@\@empty
         \err@{\Invalid@@\newsymbol}\@ehd%
       \else
        \global\mathchardef#1"#3\next@#4#5
       \fi}}


so this will work (with a warning). under LaTeX2e this could be
improved further by omitting the waring when running in compatibility
mode (ie when an old sources is detected due to \documentstyle versus
\documentclass). I think that should do the trick of given the support
you need.

frank