X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil] ["648" "Fri" "23" "October" "1998" "10:41:21" "+0000" "Joerg Knappen" "KNAPPEN@ALPHA.NTP.SPRINGER.DE" nil "19" "Re: Quotes and punctuation" "^Date:" nil nil "10" nil "Quotes and punctuation" nil nil nil] nil) X-POP3-Rcpt: schoepf@polly.zdv.Uni-Mainz.DE Received: from listserv.gmd.de (listserv.gmd.de [192.88.97.1]) by mail.Uni-Mainz.DE (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id KAA30986; Fri, 23 Oct 1998 10:41:01 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from lsv1.listserv.gmd.de (192.88.97.2) by listserv.gmd.de (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.1a) with SMTP id <1.16870D6D@listserv.gmd.de>; Fri, 23 Oct 1998 10:41:00 +0200 Received: from RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE by RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE (LISTSERV-TCP/IP release 1.8b) with spool id 404152 for LATEX-L@RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE; Fri, 23 Oct 1998 10:40:53 +0200 Received: from alpha.ntp.springer.de (alpha.ntp.springer.de [192.129.24.9]) by relay.urz.uni-heidelberg.de (8.8.8/8.8.8) with ESMTP id KAA29594 for ; Fri, 23 Oct 1998 10:40:46 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from ALPHA.NTP.SPRINGER.DE by ALPHA.NTP.SPRINGER.DE (PMDF V5.1-10 #19300) id <01J3B26EMMMO00049X@ALPHA.NTP.SPRINGER.DE> for LATEX-L@URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE; Fri, 23 Oct 1998 10:41:21 CE X-VMS-To: IN%"LATEX-L@URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE" MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; CHARSET=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT Message-ID: <01J3B26EN3KY00049X@ALPHA.NTP.SPRINGER.DE> Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project Date: Fri, 23 Oct 1998 10:41:21 +0000 From: Joerg Knappen Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L Subject: Re: Quotes and punctuation Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 2711 It is almost trivial to implement \quote{this}, but do you really expect that it will be used by the authors, typing a LaTeX script? Compare: "this" ``this'' \quote{this} in length, sophistication, and error checking. IMO, the Knuthian commands are just right -- not too long and not shortened into cryptical acronyms. LaTeX2e is already on the way to go overboard on command length, I am not very fond of all the commands prefixed by \text... Too long commands encourage the authors to come up with their own, incompatible abbreviations. It makes processing LaTeX documents on a large scale more difficult. --J"org Knappen