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Date:         Mon, 6 Jul 1998 23:46:39 +0200
From: Frank Mittelbach <Frank.Mittelbach@UNI-MAINZ.DE>
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Subject:      naming of primitives
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Javier Bezos writes:
 > IMHO, this makes a very strong case _against_ renaming the TeX
 > primitives.

refering to the fact that a \tracingall equivalent does show the
primitives by their original name (or rather by there pool type name)
in the log or the screen.

actually we have discussed this for a long time and our conclusion was
that it isn't really a problem for two reasons.

first of all it would be a onetime effort to actually provide a pool
file to go with the the latex distribution that would contain the new
names and thus everything would show up as written. of course this
would really cutting roots from the TeX book.

the alternative is to just keep it as it is. after all if all the
internal primitives look like \tex_<primitive>:D then making the
connection to a log file line that says

{<primitive>}

isn't that hard. in fact it is perhaps even easier than in formats
where some of the primitives have been renamed and others not.

of course you would want some user/developer interface to things like
\tex_show:D so that you can access them directly

also there is the question how good low-level tracing really is in a
complex environment or whether you need to rely on tracing facilities
provided by the individual modules (normally)

good night
frank