Message-Id: <199402142221.AA06140@mail.cs.tu-berlin.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
In-Reply-To:  <01H8VRBYW24I9OE9R6@MATH.AMS.ORG>
Date:         Mon, 14 Feb 1994 17:19:04 -0500
From: bbeeton <BNB@MATH.AMS.ORG>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
Subject:      Re: collective documents [was exam papers]
Status: R

sebastian doesn't like redefinition of \documentclass, etc., and
\end{document} to allow articles to be run both individually and
in a stream.  well, i don't much either, but ...

for tugboat, we expect authors to have actually run their articles
through latex, and sometimes after editing, we have to ship an
article back to an author (sometimes an author explicitly requests
return of the actual file that was published, so that it can be
used as the archived documentation).  this file should be capable
of being processed all by its lonesome.  and *exactly* the same
file should be able to go into the publication stream.  what i
really need is a mechanism that will do just that.  i am not sure
that a tarted up \include is enough.  but the mechanism needn't
be the same one (a horrible kludge) that's used now.

i hope that by the time latex3 comes along, someone will have
developed an elegant interface that will do the job with no
disruption of either author or production editor.

this is definitely a wish for the future, and i'll live with
what i have to live with until then.
                                                -- bb