Message-Id: <199402090749.AA09370@mail.cs.tu-berlin.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
Date:         Tue, 8 Feb 1994 20:51:00 +0100
From: Frank Poppe <POPPE@swov.nl>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: additional features
Status: R

Hi,

Although a lot of people seem to be interested in the idea of more
optional argument to commands, all proposed methods seem to have serious
disadvantages.

Has the method of "optional keywordsyntax" been considered?
I have been thinking of a method which would keep (for obvious
compatibility reasons) the old syntax of
  \command[optional-argument-value]{required-argument-value}
but would be able to switch to a keyword system.
One would not need an extra pair of characters, one could simply use the
brackets as delimiters for the keyword:
  \command[[keyword1]value[keyword2]value]{required-argument-value}

I'll probably overlook a lot of problems, but it seems that a second
\ifnextchar[ would differentiate between the one-argument and the
keyword system.

Coming back to the original question, it would mean that the following
two commands both would be valid in LaTeX3 (or LaTeX2e+?)
  \section[short text]{the full text}
  \section[[mark]very short text[toc]somewhat longer text]{the full text}

_____________________________________________________________________________
 Frank Poppe             <poppe@swov.nl>                tel:   +31 70 3209323
 Institute for Road Safety Research SWOV                fax:   +31 70 3201261
    ,,,  ,, ,, ,,  .... ,, ,,                           mail:      PO Box 170
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   ,,,|~ ||,'|,~  :: :' ||,~                                  the Netherlands