Message-Id: <199402101625.AA25405@mail.cs.tu-berlin.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
Date:         Thu, 10 Feb 1994 16:02:49 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: The difference between option and packages in 2e
Status: R

I shall not here repeat everything that Frank has said in his very long reply
to my request. I can perhaps summarize by saying that a package/class must do
the following:

-- define its options---all of them
-- execute default options
-- execute given options
-- carry on with its code

Thus the options must come first, else presumably something will go wrong
later, eg, some parameter gets its default value, some other parameter gets
half that value, then the first one changes its value.
Thus
\input{article.sty}
\input{a4.sty}
would presumably fail.

The problems are:

-- option a4envelope will not be recognized. (This sets the page area to that
of an envelope, so the printer doesn't object.
-- option 14pt is not recognized either, to set the default size to 14pt.

To have to define a new class to overcome these, and similar, problems seems
madness.

Should there not be a default action for all unrecognized options, rather
than just ignoring them?

Mike

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