Message-Id: <199402110936.AA17610@mail.cs.tu-berlin.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
Date:         Fri, 11 Feb 1994 09:27:43 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: On compatibility in LaTeX2e [was: Re: keyed options lis
Status: R

From:          David Carlisle <carlisle@computer-science.manchester.ac.uk>

%>
%>Mike, I seem to remember in some earlier messages you commenting on
%>lack of compatibility in certain areas, then in your last message you
%>say:
%>
%>> What I had expected was that you would keep the interface constant,
%>> but include your nice verbatim, array, theorem, etc, extensions as
%>> standard.
%>
%>The Mainz packages are incompatible with original LaTeX. If we had
%>just put them in the core then old documents would break. Producing
%>errors where before there was no error (verbatim) producing different
%>spacing (array).
%>

The problem I know about with verbatim is that you can't say
\end{verbatim} more text...
and I am pretty sure that few people would have anyway. A problem I used to
have with 209 was that I *had* to write
vvvvvv\end{verbatim}
to stop an ugly gap after the verbatim.

Perhaps you know of other problems.

I was not aware of spacing problems with array.sty. My users were happily
using it until it conflicted with someone's publisher's style file, so I had
to remove it. Were the spacing problems insurmountable?


%>The ONLY point to the new \documentclass command is that it leaves
%>\documentstyle to run old documents. We have spent hours trying to
%>ensure that as far as possible a document starting with \documentstyle
%>works as before.
%>

Hours probably wasted, in that the problem would never have arisen if this
decision about clopages had not been taken? Was there much consultation on
this list about this one? I am afraid I may have missed it if there was.

%>So you are quite free to use \documentstyle, but be aware that as far
%>as possible we will try to ensure that those documents will also work
%>at a site that is still running 2.09. So most of the new features are
%>disabled.
%>

But the implication is that you are actively encouraging users to convert
their styles to clopages. Is there a guarantee that any pyle will work
unadulterated with \documentstyle? I certainly haven't seen one; quite the
opposite, in fact. The implication is that \documentclass will take over from
\documentstyle, and that new styles will have to conform to the clockage
format.  With hard-wired limited options?


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