Message-Id: <199402100929.AA14174@mail.cs.tu-berlin.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
Date:         Thu, 10 Feb 1994 09:25:02 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:          David Carlisle <carlisle@computer-science.manchester.ac.uk>
%>
%>> ... \documentclass[option=value]{article} ....
%>
%>key = value syntax is generally quite nice for optional arguments.
%>However, I can only repeat the guiding principles of the upgrade to
%>2e, as stated in the original announcement:
%>
%> * Unmodified version 2.09 document files can be processed with
%>   LaTeX2e.
%>
%> * All new features of LaTeX2e conform to the conventions of version
%>   2.09, making it as easy as possible for current users to learn to
%>   use them.
%>
%>key=value is definitely not a standard convention of 2.09.
%>

I don't follow this argument.  \documentstyle can keep its old syntax, but
\documentclass is outside LaTeX209 and can do what it likes. Similarly
\...package... commands are entirely new.

This distinction between a document class, a package and an option seems a
spurious one, anyway. I for one haven't the foggiest notion what is what. I
should have thought that a4 was a package to set the paper area, that
article was a package to set the layout, that 12pt was a package to set the
base font size, that times was a package to set the font, that ....

Surely these functions ought to be done orthogonally. Indeed, article is far
too big a portmanteau to survive undivided, and should just be a series of
packages

\usepackage{setsectioningcommands}
\usepackage{setlistcommands}
.....


Mike Piff


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