Message-Id: <199402091514.AA21369@mail.cs.tu-berlin.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
Date:         Wed, 9 Feb 1994 14:54:22 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: A philosophical question about packages and options
Status: R

From:          Paul Taylor <pt@doc.imperial.ac.uk>

%>However that aside, I suggest that such options could be handled more
%>naturally than at present within the options mechanism by allowing
%>        \documentclass[option=value]{article}
%>and similarly \usepackage.
%>

This seems an excellent suggestion for this sort of option; I think it is
used in Ada, isn't it?  Is it general enough to handle the general "option",
though.

Actually, I expected more feedback on the distinction between "package" and
"option", but nobody seems to have latched onto the reason why
"philosophical" appeared in the subject line. Perhaps Paul has hit on a
possible distinction.  That [size=12pt] is an option, but a4 is a package?
Please enlighten me someone!

Mike

PS Many thanks to Alan and David for pointing me in the right direction about
\ProcessOptions in this particular instance.


%>This would also make the files times.sty etc about which we had a
%>heated discussion in November obsolete - you just go
%>        \documentclass[typeface=times,sans=helvetica,typewriter=courier]
%>Then people might realise what an abomination such a combination is!
%>
%>Paul
%>
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
%% Dr M J Piff, School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of %%
%% Sheffield, UK.                    e-mail: M.Piff@sheffield.ac.uk %%
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%