Message-ID:  <98111014073073@man.ac.uk>
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project
              <LATEX-L@URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE>
Date:         Tue, 10 Nov 1998 14:07:30 GMT
From: Phillip Helbig <helbig@MAN.AC.UK>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project
              <LATEX-L@URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE>
To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L
              <LATEX-L@URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE>
Subject:      Re: frontmatter was: What is "base" LaTeX
Status: R

> > Yes, we should get back to that and away from the loftier stuff!

I'll try to find some time to start thinking about this again!

> There are plans (only plans) to have some new classes next year in
> addition to the current article/report/book that will have some new
> features, one of which would be an improved frontmatter interface.
>
> There are of course existing extended frontmatter interfaces in many of
> the publishers journal class files (eg Elsevier and AMS).

> A much sterner test for a new frontmatter interface would be revtex as
> that is not just for a single journal, one needs an interface that can
> cope with several different typograpic styles, and ordering arrangemens,
> and cope with a community of authors who go in for bizarre practices
> like having a 200 author author-list that is probably longer than the
> document text.

It seems to me that three constraints are necessary:

   o  it should look as much like present LaTeX as possible

   o  it should be flexible enough to address the needs of all present
      and future(!) journals

   o  one should not have to bother with features which are not needed
      in a particular application

It seems to me that something similar to BibTeX is the best solution.
There have been some preliminary versions of this mentioned on this
list.  The journal could modify the \maketitle command to get all the
frontmatter stuff (institute, email, present address, corresponding
author, acknowledgements to title or authors etc etc) out of a .bib-like
file, using what it needs and complaining if something is not there. The
author just writes \title{efwe}\author{Fwfe}\date{fsfs} as usual (OK,
perhaps some optional arguments to \date are needed).


--
Phillip Helbig                          Email ......... p.helbig@jb.man.ac.uk
Nuffield Radio Astronomy Laboratories   Tel. .... +44 1477 571 321 (ext. 297)
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