References:  <199901281617.LAA17312@hilbert.math.albany.edu>
Message-ID:  <199901281701.RAA17232@nag.co.uk>
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In-Reply-To:  <199901281617.LAA17312@hilbert.math.albany.edu>
              (hammond@CSC.ALBANY.EDU)
Date:         Thu, 28 Jan 1999 17:01:33 GMT
From: David Carlisle <davidc@NAG.CO.UK>
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To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L
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Subject:      Re: preamble declarations wanted
Status: R

> 1.  "\noblankpars":
This appears to be \def\par{}, since a blank line is \par.
(But some commands may get surprised if you do that)

> 2.  "\commandend{;}":  LaTeX practice such as
>                        "\LaTeX{} is great"
> does not always leave quite the right space after

I do not understand this comment. If used outside math mode, then
\foo{} xxx will always leave the same amount of space as would
be produced if \foo was replaced by its definition.
Why is that not `quite right'?
In math mode, {} produces a mathord atom, but there the space in the
input doesn't matter, so you can just do \foo xxx.

> 3.  "\strictargoptsyntax": that any command with a sequence of
> arguments and/or options of postive length must have no white space at
> all between the command name and the first arg/opt or between
> successive arg/opt's.

Why? Latex as in most other languages these days, white space between
arguments is ignored. When is this ever not a desirable feature?
Tex's handling of white space is often not desirable, but I have never
thought this was bad. (In fact I put quite some effort in to making it
be true in latex2e, rather than just almost true in 2.09)

David