Message-Id: <199402161410.AA28288@mail.cs.tu-berlin.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@DHDURZ1.BITNET>
Date:         Wed, 16 Feb 1994 13:44:30 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:      Style in LaTeX-3
Status: R

You have two years to answer the following questions. Please start now.

Consider the following fragment of code:
---------------------------------------
\def\@maketitle{%                         <----
  \newpage                                <----
  \null
  \vskip 2em%                             <----
  \begin{center}%                         <----
    {\LARGE \@title \par}%                <---- <---- <----
    \vskip 1.5em%                         <----
    {\large                               <----
      \lineskip .5em%                     <----
      \begin{tabular}[t]{c}%              <----
        \@author                          <----
      \end{tabular}\par}%                 <----
    \vskip 1em%                           <----
    {\large \@date}%                      <---- <----
  \end{center}%
  \par                                    <----
  \vskip 1.5em}                           <----
--------------------------------------

(a) Explain in detail why it is difficult to modify the behaviour of this
fragment without completely replacing it.  Attention is particularly drawn to
the points labelled <----.
(b) Discuss similar (worse?) problems with \@startsection.
(c) Find several hundred similar problems in LaTeX.
(d) Discuss whether or not the LaTeX package needed some re-coding *now*.
(e) Discuss the use of markup in the above, particularly stressing the
separation of markup and layout.
(f) Explain why X should want to define
\newcommand{\Section}[1]{\section{\sl #1\/}}
and why Y should throw up his/her hands in horror at this.

                    End of Question Paper