X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil] ["1627" "Thu" "10" "February" "1994" "09:59:56" "LCL" "Mike Piff" "M.Piff@sheffield.ac.uk" "<199402101205.AA18269@mail.cs.tu-berlin.de>" "37" "Re: A philosophical question about packages and options" "^Date:" nil nil "2" "1994021009:59:56" "A philosophical question about packages and options" nil nil]) Return-Path: Received: from sc.ZIB-Berlin.DE (mailserv) by dagobert.ZIB-Berlin.DE (4.1/SMI-4.0/24.6.93) id AA13953; Thu, 10 Feb 94 13:06:51 +0100 Received: from mail.cs.tu-berlin.de by sc.ZIB-Berlin.DE (4.1/SMI-4.0-sc/03.06.93) id AA00902; Thu, 10 Feb 94 13:05:49 +0100 Received: from tubvm.cs.tu-berlin.de by mail.cs.tu-berlin.de with SMTP id AA18269 (5.65c8/IDA-1.4.4(mail.m4[1.12]) for <@MAIL.CS.TU-BERLIN.DE:Schoepf@SC.ZIB-BERLIN.DE>); Thu, 10 Feb 1994 13:05:45 +0100 Message-Id: <199402101205.AA18269@mail.cs.tu-berlin.de> Received: from TUBVM.CS.TU-BERLIN.DE by tubvm.cs.tu-berlin.de (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with BSMTP id 3290; Thu, 10 Feb 94 13:05:29 +0200 Received: from VM.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE (NJE origin MAILER@DHDURZ1) by TUBVM.CS.TU-BERLIN.DE (LMail V1.2a/1.8a) with BSMTP id 3289; Thu, 10 Feb 1994 13:05:29 +0200 Received: from VM.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE (NJE origin LISTSERV@DHDURZ1) by VM.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE (LMail V1.2a/1.8a) with BSMTP id 9312; Thu, 10 Feb 1994 11:13:50 +0000 Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project Date: Thu, 10 Feb 1994 09:59:56 LCL From: Mike Piff Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L Subject: Re: A philosophical question about packages and options Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 1508 From: Dean Ayres %> %>Mike Piff asked about modifying letter.cls with classes and packages. %> %>I asked a similar question soon after LaTeX2e was released. One solution %>(which I use) is to define a new class somas which calls the letter class. %>somas can modify the letter class and can define new class options, and %>inherit the class options (eg a4paper) provided by letter. (using the %>\PassOptionsToClass command.) %> %>There's no reason why mjplet could not be a class which calls %>somas which calls letter. (except that you might run out of memory). %> %>Alternatively, mjplet could be a package which modifies the behaviour of somas %>by defining \signature etc. I guess this is preferable, and is akin to the %>`style option' of LaTeX2.09 %> %>Dean Ayres %> I only quote this to point out that I am not alone in not understanding the distinction between option, package and class. Why this obfuscation? Anyway, the list environment is presumably a package to do lists, the output routine is a package to do output, so everything is up for grabs:-) However, I do agree that the \RequiresPackage command is *extremely* important if you take this attitude, equivalent to Modula-2's IMPORT statement. Are we also to be treated to DEFINITION and IMPLEMENTATION modules in LaTeX-3?:-> Mike Piff %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% %% Dr M J Piff, School of Mathematics and Statistics, University of %% %% Sheffield, UK. e-mail: M.Piff@sheffield.ac.uk %% %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%