In-reply-to: <m0rwvSx-0006P5C@rumple.soas.ac.uk> (message from Philip Taylor on
 Thu, 6 Apr 1995 18:14:33 +0100)
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Date: Thu, 06 Apr 1995 18:07:00 +0000 (GMT)
From: Frank Bennett <fbennett@RUMPLE.SOAS.AC.UK>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L%DHDURZ1.BITNET@vm.gmd.de>
To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L <LATEX-L%DHDURZ1.BITNET@vm.gmd.de>
Subject: LaTeX modularity
Status: R

Interesting note, Philip.  I couldn't say anything about the
merits of a fully modular design, because I don't have anything
close to a comprehensive understanding of the inner workings of
either plain TeX or LaTeX.  I'll leave that issue to others who
have the knowledge (or at least the passion) to sustain the
debate.

But there is an alternative, I think.  LaTeX itself can be made
more flexible, so that adjusting the way an environment behaves,
say, involves less in the way of original research.

One gidget that I've come up with that could help 2e/3's
designers in this area is an option parser that can cope with a
mix of single-character option flags (as in current LaTeX) and
option strings.  This can be used to embed options in the
environment itself, rather than as a \renewcommand's,
\setlength's \setcounter's or whatever drifting around somewhere
above it.

This is not pure `syntactic sugar'.  If options are invoked as
part of an environment, we can issue error messages that are
specific to that environment and --- something lacking in TeX
generally --- an explanation of what the alternatives and perhaps
the consequences are, to save a rummage through one of the many
excellent manuals available from your local bookseller.

This parsing mechanism will form part of Camel, the new
all-singing all-dancing citation engine that I am developing as
an offering to the LaTeX-3 project.  If anyone wants a demo file,
just drop a line my way.

Cheers,
--
Frank G Bennett, Jr
Law Department, SOAS, London
Tel: (071)323-6351
email: fbennett@rumple.soas.ac.uk
WWW: http://rumple.soas.ac.uk/~fbennett/