Message-Id: <199402081511.AA18086@mail.cs.tu-berlin.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
In-Reply-To:  <199402081432.PAA11520@hp5.iti.informatik.th-darmstadt.de> from
              "David Carlisle" at Feb 8, 94 02:08:55 pm
Date:         Tue, 8 Feb 1994 16:09:19 +0100
From: Joachim Schrod <schrod@iti.informatik.th-darmstadt.de>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: A philosophical question about packages and options
Status: R

David wrote:
>
> Actually it might be better to make somas into a class rather than a
> package (it can \LoadClass{letter})

Btw, how about a
    \ProvidesDerivedClass{class}{base class}[class info][base class info]

basically defined as

    \ProvidesClass{#1}[#3]
    \DeclareOption*{\PassOptionsToClass{\CurrentOption}{#2}}
    \ProcessOptions
    \LoadClass{#2}[#4]

under the assumption that options specific to this derived class are
to be declared in advance.

IMHO it would introduce an abstraction level that would encourage
reuse of existing class. In fact, I expect most contributed classes
to be some derivation of one of the standard classes, with
redefinitions of headers etc.; so it would be appropriate to provide
a respective construct.

Cheers,
        Joachim

--
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Joachim Schrod                  Email: schrod@iti.informatik.th-darmstadt.de
Computer Science Department
Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany