Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v928.1)
References: <8D5403E89293A448A409DDDD1531CE1801951A53@defrm202.emea.corp.eds.com>
Message-ID:  <344CDCA0-EF19-472B-A190-DCB85C586E83@gmail.com>
Date:         Wed, 10 Sep 2008 01:55:52 +0930
Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project
              <LATEX-L@LISTSERV.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@LISTSERV.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE>
From: Will Robertson <wspr81@GMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: def:NNn --- was tlp type
To: LATEX-L@LISTSERV.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE
In-Reply-To:  <8D5403E89293A448A409DDDD1531CE1801951A53@defrm202.emea.corp.eds.com>
Precedence: list
Status: R

On 10/09/2008, at 1:34 AM, Mittelbach, Frank wrote:

> my take is that the recent addition of \def:NNn and firends was  
> already a mistake and should be reverted. These functions provide  
> something which at the expl3 level isn't really needed.

I'm undecided so far. I definitely see your side of the argument.

But it is nice to just write "4" instead of, say, "##1##2##3##4"; less  
characters means more clarity, in this case. Sometimes functions that  
define other functions can get a bit lost in all the octothorps.

On the other hand, it is only "syntactic sugar" for which we're paying  
(not so) precious expansions.

Will