Message-Id: <199402021430.AA19174@mail.cs.tu-berlin.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
Date:         Wed, 2 Feb 1994 14:26:10 LCL
From: Mike Piff <M.Piff@SHEFFIELD.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:      Re: Subject: AmS-LaTeX with 2e
Status: R

From:  Joachim Schrod <schrod@ITI.INFORMATIK.TH-DARMSTADT.DE>
%>Mike, have you slept bad? Problems with your partner or your children?
%>
%>I sympathize with Rainer a lot; such a mail is impertinent, to say
%>the least.

If by impertinent you mean "not to the point" then I disagree. There was a
point, and I explained that point in great detail.

If you mean---its normal meaning---contemptuous or insolent, then I can only
say that that was not intended, and I have already apologized if it
was taken that way. "Facetious exaggeration" would be a better description.

On the other hand, your comments above can only be described as obnoxious.

%>
%>If you use internal details of _beta_ software that is changed later,
%>you don't have ANY reason to complain. NOT A BIT. Shut up. It was YOUR
%>choice to use it.

Ah but there is the problem. How far can you get in LaTeX by using *only* the
external features?  If you doubt this, then look at a few style files on CTAN
and see how many have to fight LaTeX to get anywhere. How do you get an
enumerate environment to behave in the ways I detailed yesterday using only
official LaTeX? Are we supposed to reinvent the list environment just to do
simple tasks like those?  Look at Babel.doc, which uses internals all over
the place.

%>    If you want a save world, stay with officially released software,
%>and do not use things that are released so that others can help to
%>make improvements.
%>    The only things that result from such complaints are that open
%>developments -- that authors release software early to get comments --
%>are done more seldom. And this is extremly bad.
%>

As far as I recall, the mechanism of defining a font shape was  was
never explained in the original article on nfss. I copied from existing
files, for want of documentation. How was I supposed to do it from the
"official" release, only using "official" commands? Or was I not supposed to
use fonts other than those in the official release? Such an argument is
ludicrous.

Mike

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%% Dr M J Piff, School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of %%
%% Sheffield, UK.                    e-mail: M.Piff@sheffield.ac.uk %%
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