X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil] ["931" "Wed" "22" "October" "1997" "11:30:38" "+0200" "Hans Aberg" "haberg@MATEMATIK.SU.SE" nil "21" "Re: \\@ifdefinable" "^Date:" nil nil "10" nil nil nil nil nil] nil) Received: from listserv.gmd.de (listserv.gmd.de [192.88.97.1]) by mail.Uni-Mainz.DE (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id LAA21162; Wed, 22 Oct 1997 11:49:59 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from lsv1.listserv.gmd.de by listserv.gmd.de (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.1a) with SMTP id <13.152639A7@listserv.gmd.de>; Wed, 22 Oct 1997 11:49:57 +0200 Received: from RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE by RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE (LISTSERV-TCP/IP release 1.8b) with spool id 220379 for LATEX-L@RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE; Wed, 22 Oct 1997 11:49:49 +0200 Received: from insanus.matematik.su.se (root@insanus.matematik.su.se [130.237.198.12]) by relay.urz.uni-heidelberg.de (8.8.7/8.8.7) with ESMTP id LAA14967 for ; Wed, 22 Oct 1997 11:48:28 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from [130.237.37.76] (sl101.modempool.kth.se [130.237.37.127]) by insanus.matematik.su.se (8.8.7/8.6.9) with ESMTP id KAA18641 for ; Wed, 22 Oct 1997 10:48:20 +0100 (MET) X-Address: Department of Mathematics, Stockholm University S-106 91 Stockholm SWEDEN X-Phone: int+46 8 162000 X-Fax: int+46 8 6126717 X-Url: http://www.matematik.su.se X-Sender: su95-hab@mail.nada.kth.se References: (message from Hans Aberg on Mon, 20 Oct 1997 19:30:59 +0200) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Message-ID: Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project In-Reply-To: Date: Wed, 22 Oct 1997 11:30:38 +0200 From: Hans Aberg Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L Subject: Re: \@ifdefinable Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 2499 At 16:43 +0100 97/10/21, David Carlisle wrote: >To answer the original question > >> Should not \@ifdefinable be changed so that it does not check >> \@ifundefined? > >No. Changing the semantics of a command used in a large proportion >of latex packages is not a very safe thing to do. > >Your analysis of the possibilities for defining/testing commands >sounds reasonable, but any implementation of such a thing should >use new names and keep clear of the old (existing) interface. Well, I figured this was a problem, too, and wanted to mainly discuss the semantics involved, not the particular naming, which is subordinate to that. But if there are other such somewhat messy internals in LaTeX needed to be straighten out, I think one should do this in the LaTeX3 project. Hans Aberg * Email: Hans Aberg * AMS member listing: