X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil] ["1862" "Tue" "9" "November" "1999" "10:10:29" "+0100" "Frank Mittelbach" "frank.mittelbach@SMC.EDS.DE" nil "50" "Re: xcontents" "^Date:" nil nil "11" nil nil nil nil nil] nil) Received: from mail.listserv.gmd.de (mail.listserv.gmd.de [192.88.97.5]) by mail.Uni-Mainz.DE (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id KAA12790 for ; Tue, 9 Nov 1999 10:10:36 +0100 (MET) Received: from mail.listserv.gmd.de (192.88.97.5) by mail.listserv.gmd.de (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.1a) with SMTP id <9.1EA22FC8@mail.listserv.gmd.de>; Tue, 9 Nov 1999 10:10:32 +0100 Received: from RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE by RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE (LISTSERV-TCP/IP release 1.8b) with spool id 445205 for LATEX-L@RELAY.URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE; Tue, 9 Nov 1999 10:10:21 +0100 Received: from gate.eds.de (gate.eds.de [205.191.194.5]) by relay.urz.uni-heidelberg.de (8.8.8/8.8.8) with SMTP id KAA09472 for ; Tue, 9 Nov 1999 10:10:19 +0100 (MET) Received: from n15ux24.nets.de.eds.com by gate.eds.de with SMTP id KAA23131 (InterLock SMTP Gateway 4.2 for ); Tue, 9 Nov 1999 10:11:32 +0100 Received: by n15ux24.nets.de.eds.com (1.37.109.16/16.2) id AA060698630; Tue, 9 Nov 1999 10:10:30 +0100 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <199911061944.OAA03745@hilbert.math.albany.edu> <199911081958.TAA20332@mimosa.csv.warwick.ac.uk> X-Mailer: VM 6.62 under Emacs 19.34.1 Message-ID: <14375.58629.679692.883454@n15ux24.nets.de.eds.com> Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project In-Reply-To: <199911081958.TAA20332@mimosa.csv.warwick.ac.uk> Date: Tue, 9 Nov 1999 10:10:29 +0100 From: Frank Mittelbach Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project To: Multiple recipients of list LATEX-L Subject: Re: xcontents Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 3393 James, > I've been filling in the gaps in xcontents.dtx, and have a working > package that more or less matches the documentation. The main thing I sounds great. i guess you are going to share that with us at some point, yes? > think from using the new packages it the error catching needs to be > greatly improved. error catching is an important aspect in its own right; i agree. but for prototype implementations i don't mind much if errors aren't caught. after all, the main purpose of prototype impls is that one is prepared to throw them away and do a clean reimplentation afterwards when the concepts are stable (eg xparse already has its third impl and is likely to get another one or two) > > There is mention in xparse.dtx (I think) of putting help texts in > \DeclareDocumentCommand, is that likely to happen? i would say yes. but one needs to think about how to struture that "help info" so that external programs (like emacs or whatever) can make good use of the information. for LaTeX itself the information is not likely to be usable (i think) > Similarly for an > informal description of the arguments in \DeclareTemplateType. Are > there any more thoughts on how that could be done? It would be not yet. i still change my mind (daily?) about how to present the information in the documentation. as long as i don't even have a good idea how to do this on this level ... but perhaps somebody has some good idea for providing such information. effectively all i think commands like \DeclareUserCommand or \DeclareTemplateType etc. should do is to provide an extra argument in which this information goes but not to use it themselves. by the way, was this mail sent before it was finished? my copy ends with > there any more thoughts on how that could be done? It would be which doesn't look like a full sentence frank