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References: <helbig@MULTIVAC.JB.MAN.AC.UK>
            <199712051207.NAA05947@relay.urz.uni-heidelberg.de>
            <1416-Fri05Dec1997122404+0000-s.rahtz@elsevier.co.uk>
Message-ID:  <199712051313.OAA10402@sardinia.informatik.uni-freiburg.de>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project
              <LATEX-L@RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE>
In-Reply-To:  <1416-Fri05Dec1997122404+0000-s.rahtz@elsevier.co.uk>
Date:         Fri, 5 Dec 1997 14:13:14 +0100
From: Wolfgang May <may@INFORMATIK.UNI-FREIBURG.DE>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project
              <LATEX-L@RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE>
To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L
              <LATEX-L@RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE>
Subject:      Re: private macros and journal .cls
Status: R

On Thu, 4 Dec 1997 09:37:47 GMT Phillip Helbig said:

>One leading scientific journal is exemplary in REQUIRING 2e instead of
>2.09 but prohibits the use of private macros (even if defined in the
>preamble with no name clashes, redefinitions etc of standard commands or
>ones from the special journal .cls),
[]
>Is this something one must be prepared to accept in the long run?


Sebastian Rahtz writes:

 >  > while the author
 >  > usually provides an almost completely typeset manuscript,
 >  > publishers should _gladly_ accept anything the author is prepared to
 >  > deliver instead of imposing specific requirements.
 >
 > the problem is that the author "provides an almost completely
 > *non-portable* typeset manuscript". (my **).  sadly, this is not what
 > is needed in the world of electronic publishing. the cost of cleaning
 > up that "typeset manuscript" is really very high.
 >
 > yes, of course publishers screw you. its a bargain, we screw you, you
 > (the academic world) get to play games about tenure based on
 > publication rate. if you drop that absurdity, you can free yourselves
 > from the Faustian pact with the publishers.

For *one* paper, the way described by P.H. above works well. I suppose
that the main problem is that in most journals there are several
papers, so, if each of them has no clashes with latex2e and the
journal styles, there is also the problem of clashes *between* the
papers.

One possibility could be that every author guarantees that he only
defines macros which begin with an identifier which is unlikely
to clash with *any* other paper, e.g. names like

\phelbigXbla{...} or
\srahtzXblubb{...}
etc .pp.

Perhaps this can be a feasible compromise ?

Wolfgang

--------------------------------------------------------------------
Wolfgang May             E-mail: may@informatik.uni-freiburg.de
Universitaet Freiburg    http://www.informatik.uni-freiburg.de/~may/
Institut fuer Informatik D-79110 Freiburg / Germany
Lehrstuhl fuer Datenbanken und Informationssysteme