Message-Id: <199401261530.AA07869@mail.cs.tu-berlin.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
Date:         Wed, 26 Jan 1994 15:20:11 GMT
From: David Rhead <David_Rhead@VME.CCC.NOTTINGHAM.AC.UK>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
Subject:      Mapping a structure onto a design
Status: R

I assume that with Sebastian's
     i think my colleagues in the US should suffer too by saying
     \documentclass[lettersize]{...} in every job.
we've now moved on to questions about LaTeX3 (since LaTeX2e was a
consilidation exercise, and I don't expect that Frank and Co. will
want to mess around with "the standard styles" prior to LaTeX3).

My understanding was that, for LaTeX3, we could go back to the drawing
board for such things (although there might be an obligation to provide a
backwards compatibility module, so that 2.09 \documentstyle and 2e
\documentclass still work).

If we are going back to the drawing board, I think that it would be nice to
get rid of as much as possible of the current confusion between structure
and design in the current \document...  things.  (What's "report"?  Is it a
structure?  Is it a design?  What is different between "book" and "report"?
[Structure: only absence of "abstract", I think.  Design: quite a bit.] )
E.g., could we have
     \mapping{structure}{design}
In the article case, we'd have to decide what structure an article has
(DTD, if you like).  In general, this would be mapped to an "article
design" for a particular publisher.  E.g., (ignoring MS-DOS filename
limits) could we have
     \mapping{article}{espart}
and
     \mapping{article}{amspreprint}
for "map the article structure onto the Elsevier Science Publishers article
design" or "map the article structure onto the AMS preprint design",
perhaps?

How would "analogues of the 2.09/2e standard styles" fit into this?
Could one have things like
     \mapping{article}{default-article}
     \mapping{article}{US-default-article}
     \mapping{article}{A4-default-article}
for example?  Here default-article could
either be a design that will fit onto both US and A4 laserprinter paper.
       "Too short for A4, too narrow for US, but never mind, it's only
       intended for pre-prints."
or     could be installation-dependent.  It could be set at installation
       to either US-default-article or A4-default-article.
Either way
     \mapping{article}{default-article}
would
*  be OK for stuff that is to be e-mailed.  It could cross the Atlantic,
   and still give something that will fit on a laserprinter at the other
   end.  (Neither Barbara nor Sebastian would have to change a
     \mapping{article}{default-article}
   file that the other one sent to them.)
*  keep people's expectations of "the design" down.  It's only "the default".
   It's not the only thing that LaTeX3 can do.  LaTeX3 needn't be "badly
   regarded" just because people don't like "the default design".
*  anyone who receives such stuff and doesn't like the default design can
   change it to
     \mapping{article}{my-favourite-article}
   before LaTeX3-ing it (since they will be clear that the structure is
   article).

Perhaps some non-default designs could come in "the LaTeX3 kit" too -- not
to provide "everything for everyone", but as a set of typical examples to
illustrate the tricks that people may need to use to get what they want.
But I'd have thought that it would be sufficient to put a comment in the
code saying "this is designed for ...-size paper", or to get LaTeX3 to
print crop-marks.  I don't see that such "example non-default designs" need
attempt to support optional arguments such as A4, letter, 10pt, 11pt, 12pt,
twocolumn.  It isn't reasonable to expect that all permutations of all such
arguments are going to give "good designs".

                                                                David Rhead