Message-Id: <199402081245.AA14206@mail.cs.tu-berlin.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
Date:         Tue, 8 Feb 1994 12:41:43 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:      A philosophical question about packages and options
Status: R

Suppose I wish to set up a package to produce customizable letterheads. I
have a .sty file to do this, so it isn't going to be much hassle. Currently,
the letterhead style sets certain defaults for the letterhead, and the user
customizes by making changes. For instance, here is my own style, although I
could have more than one, and some people do.

\input{somas.sty}%%School of maths letterhead
\name{Dr M. J. Piff}       % In letterhead
\signature{M. J. Piff}  % at end of letter
\telephone{(0742)~824431 (direct)\\824366/7 (secretaries)}
\extension{}
\fax{}
\email{M.Piff@shef.ac.uk}
\oddsidemargin0in
\textwidth6.25in

I put this into a file called mjplet.sty, because I don't want to have to
include that information in every preamble. Then I use

\documentstyle[.....,mjplet,...]{letter}

and away.

Clearly I would now have to use something like

\documentclass{letter}
\usepackage{mjplet}

where mjplet contains

\usepackage{somas}
\name{Dr M. J. Piff}       % In letterhead
\signature{M. J. Piff}  % at end of letter
\telephone{(0742)~824431 (direct)\\824366/7 (secretaries)}
\extension{}
\fax{}
\email{M.Piff@shef.ac.uk}
\oddsidemargin0in
\textwidth6.25in

but there is possibly a more natural way to do this:(?)

\usepackage[mjplet]{somas}

where mjplet is an option that modifies the behaviour of somas.

However, presumably I can't do that because mjplet, xyzlet, abclet, etc would
all have to be pre-defined in somas, is that right? And the options are
infinitely extensible, or at least, there are a fair number of them.

In fact, somas modifies the behaviour of letter. I don't understand the
distinction between packages and options.

Mike Piff


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