Received: from mail.proteosys.com ([213.139.130.197]) by nummer-3.proteosys with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.3959); Wed, 10 Sep 2008 21:55:25 +0200 Received: by mail.proteosys.com (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id m8AJtJSu021083 for ; Wed, 10 Sep 2008 21:55:20 +0200 Received: from listserv.uni-heidelberg.de (listserv.uni-heidelberg.de [129.206.100.94]) by relay2.uni-heidelberg.de (8.13.8/8.13.8) with ESMTP id m8AJnwuH003185 (version=TLSv1/SSLv3 cipher=DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA bits=256 verify=NO); Wed, 10 Sep 2008 21:49:58 +0200 Received: from listserv.uni-heidelberg.de (localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]) by listserv.uni-heidelberg.de (8.13.1/8.13.1) with ESMTP id m8AI4G5w030740; Wed, 10 Sep 2008 21:49:56 +0200 Received: by LISTSERV.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE (LISTSERV-TCP/IP release 15.5) with spool id 33226 for LATEX-L@LISTSERV.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE; Wed, 10 Sep 2008 21:49:56 +0200 Received: from relay.uni-heidelberg.de (relay.uni-heidelberg.de [129.206.100.212]) by listserv.uni-heidelberg.de (8.13.1/8.13.1) with ESMTP id m8AJnuBJ005189 for ; Wed, 10 Sep 2008 21:49:56 +0200 Received: from anchor-post-37.mail.demon.net (anchor-post-37.mail.demon.net [194.217.242.87]) by relay.uni-heidelberg.de (8.14.1/8.14.1) with ESMTP id m8AJnfWv005133 for ; Wed, 10 Sep 2008 21:49:45 +0200 Received: from cremornelane.demon.co.uk ([80.177.25.195] helo=[192.168.0.2]) by anchor-post-37.mail.demon.net with esmtp (Exim 4.69) id 1KdVh6-0001fp-PH for LATEX-L@LISTSERV.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE; Wed, 10 Sep 2008 19:49:40 +0000 User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.16 (Windows/20080708) MIME-Version: 1.0 References: <48C817F4.4080208@morningstar2.co.uk> <18632.7373.71980.984368@morse.mittelbach-online.de> X-Enigmail-Version: 0.95.7 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-ID: <48C824D1.2060706@morningstar2.co.uk> Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2008 20:49:37 +0100 Reply-To: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project From: Joseph Wright Subject: Re: Keys in expl3: some thoughts (might be l3keys) To: LATEX-L@LISTSERV.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE In-Reply-To: <18632.7373.71980.984368@morse.mittelbach-online.de> Precedence: list List-Help: , List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Owner: List-Archive: X-ProteoSys-SPAM-Score: -2.599 () BAYES_00 X-Scanned-By: MIMEDefang 2.64 on 213.139.130.197 Return-Path: owner-latex-l@LISTSERV.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE X-OriginalArrivalTime: 10 Sep 2008 19:55:25.0253 (UTC) FILETIME=[2A8E8F50:01C9137F] Status: R X-Status: X-Keywords: X-UID: 5281 Frank Mittelbach wrote: > not able to digest that right now, but one question up front ... No problem - there is no rush. I will probably stick with my current approach first in any case (as I have a model to follow) then revise it later. So what I'm aiming at will essentially implement what is in the pgf/tikz manual under "Utilities -> Key management" but with everything built using expl3 (I'm currently working on \pgfkeys ~ \keys_manage:n, etc.). > have you had a look at the template approach? Morten pointed out that template needs to do a lot of clever stuff. I think much of that is overkill for most people looking at using keyval input (I could be wrong, of course). I'm mainly thinking about stuff like keyval package options (from my own packages, siunitx comes to mind for lots of simple options, or something like biblatex) or stuff like PStricks or pgf/tikz. Both of the later use a lot of keys, and the model of pgfkeys should at least cover pgf/tikz-type requirements (it is the key engine used!). I'm still trying to understand template, by the way. > whatever we do for property mappings the template system should use the same > interface (which might well mean changing what is there) Very true. I'm just exploring things: this came up as when I looked at the current l3keyval (for my xnotes2bib implementation) I couldn't find anything for reproducing what I do in notes2bib with xkeyval. The more I've worked with keyval packages, the less I like how xkeyval works (I challenge anyone to remember the full syntax for the macros). I think the "/path/key/.property" model is pretty clear and also flexible. Hence looking at pgfkeys for a staring point. (As an aside, I would shift my current packages to pgfkeys, but as it is only available as part of the entire pgf bundle its a bit of a big ask as a dependency, hence stick with xkeyval for the moment. So I'm hoping that LaTeX3 will provide this type of thing "out of the box", making my life easier.) -- Joseph Wright