X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil] ["1768" "Thu" "13" "July" "1995" "18:21:31" "-0300" "David Carlisle" "carlisle@CS.MAN.AC.UK" nil "41" "Re: [Q] modguide.tex policy" "^Date:" nil nil "7" nil nil nil nil] nil) Received: from MZDMZA.ZDV.UNI-MAINZ.DE (vzdmzj.zdv.Uni-Mainz.DE [134.93.8.16]) by trudi.zdv.Uni-Mainz.DE (8.6.12/8.6.12) with ESMTP id TAA27114 for ; Thu, 13 Jul 1995 19:23:56 +0200 Received: from DIRECTORY-DAEMON by MZDMZA.ZDV.UNI-MAINZ.DE (PMDF V4.3-12 #4432) id <01HSTZMOT19S90MWGE@MZDMZA.ZDV.UNI-MAINZ.DE>; Thu, 13 Jul 1995 19:23:35 +0100 Received: from listserv.gmd.de by MZDMZA.ZDV.UNI-MAINZ.DE (PMDF V4.3-12 #4432) id <01HSTZMLMR8G8WW4C2@MZDMZA.ZDV.UNI-MAINZ.DE>; Thu, 13 Jul 1995 19:23:32 +0100 Received: from listserv.gmd.de by listserv.gmd.de (LSMTP for OpenVMS v0.1a) with SMTP id 9A79637C ; Thu, 13 Jul 1995 19:23:31 +0200 Received: from VM.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE by VM.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE (LISTSERV release 1.8b) with NJE id 4109 for LATEX-L@VM.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE; Thu, 13 Jul 1995 19:20:34 +0000 Received: from DHDURZ1 (NJE origin SMTP@DHDURZ1) by VM.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE (LMail V1.2a/1.8a) with BSMTP id 9553; Thu, 13 Jul 1995 19:19:08 +0000 Received: from m1.cs.man.ac.uk by vm.urz.Uni-Heidelberg.de (IBM VM SMTP V2R2) with TCP; Thu, 13 Jul 95 19:19:06 CET Received: from r8.cs.man.ac.uk by m1.cs.man.ac.uk (4.1/SMI-4.1:AL5l) id AA15525; Thu, 13 Jul 95 18:21:36 BST In-reply-to: (message from Frank Bennett on Thu, 13 Jul 1995 17:42:00 GMT) Reply-to: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project Message-id: <9507131721.AA18212@r8.cs.man.ac.uk> X-Envelope-to: schoepf@goofy.zdv.uni-mainz.de MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Date: Thu, 13 Jul 1995 18:21:31 -0300 (BST) From: David Carlisle Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L Subject: Re: [Q] modguide.tex policy Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 1686 > I've just read again through the latest modguide.tex file, and I > have a question. In the camel.dtx package, there is an entry > that starts off: > \long\def\@footnotetext#1{ [...] > This is a command of the same name as one of the internals of the > LaTeX2e kernel. It is redefined with the same content as the > kernel command, plus the following: ... > Now here's my puzzle for the team. Does this breach the terms > set down in modguide.tex: is this `modification of the contents > of a file'? As I read it, it is not, technically, a breach. It is (unfortunately) often necessary for a package to redefine LaTeX commands. Of course package authors know that if they rely on stuff that is too low level the package is `fragile' with respect to any LaTeX updates but sometimes.... The main thrust of the conditions in modguide (and legal.txt) is that any modified *file* should have a different name and any \Provides... typeout banners should *not* claim to be Standard LaTeX. So to be specific, if you come up with a better multi-page table package (Shouldn't be too hard:-) I dont mind how much of the code from longtable you copy as long as the file is not called longtable.sty (So end users' documents must use a distinct call to get your version) and the \ProvidesPackage string in your file doesn't have my initials. So if you put changes in a camel package then document portability is not an issue. Either documents \usepackage{camel} to get your stuff or they dont, in which case they dont get your code. So the restrictions are on modifying *files* without changing names. Changing commands is OK. In fact I would be surprised if a citation package did *not* need to redefine some of the standard citation and footnote commands. David