Message-Id: <199402091616.AA23839@mail.cs.tu-berlin.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
Date:         Wed, 9 Feb 1994 16:13:55 +0000
From: Paul Taylor <pt@DOC.IC.AC.UK>
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To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: A philosophical question about packages and options
Status: R

Mike Piff said something about philosophical distinctions between
options and packages.  I think I tried to raise this one myself
and Frank said "wait and see".

Pre-2e my custom was to \input packages and restrict \documentstyle
to options which were OPTIONAL.  That is, if you didn't have a4.sty
or wanted a different STYLE you could delete them and put in your own.

Is this what you mean, Mike?  If so, I agree.  A "style option" may well
be a complicated collection of macros, just like a package, but it is
different in that (1) it affects the style and (2) it's optional.
I don't think it's very natural to call packages .sty.

The option=value syntax (in some form or other) is pretty standard.
Look in the manual of any well established piece of software with
lots of features.

My diagrams package has had a \diagramstyle{} command for a while,
which takes a list of commands with optional values.  I was hoping
that \usepackage would take over from it, but without the values
it can't.  Pity.  My code parses the (optional) value and provides
it as \@value, which may be \undefined.  For compatibility, LaTeX2e
could check for \ds@option=value and then for \ds@option, providing
\@value.

Paul

PS Nothing personal, but I'm planning to leave this list because
I haven't been reading much of it recently and feel I spend too
much time on TeX anyway.  I was supposed to be writing a report
about commutative diagrams, which I'll do when I get a response
to my recent letter to Kris Rose on this subject.