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Message-ID:  <OF8FA69D07.A3FCD59A-ON80257797.00390455-80257797.00390460@mcs-notes1.open.ac.uk>
Date:         Tue, 7 Sep 2010 11:22:46 +0100
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              <LATEX-L@listserv.uni-heidelberg.de>
Sender: Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <LATEX-L@listserv.uni-heidelberg.de>
From: Chris Rowley <c.a.rowley@OPEN.AC.UK>
Subject: Re: About standard classes
To: LATEX-L@listserv.uni-heidelberg.de
In-Reply-To:  <001b01cb4e4b$aaad9f10$0008dd30$@art-satz.de>
Precedence: list
Status: R

Hi Ulrich

I think that Will was perhaps a bit misleading but also you misinterpreted
him, thus:

> The LaTeX3 project has not really started discuss such high-level aspects

Historically this is not true: much of the earlier work on LaTeX3 was devoted to 
the possibilities for designer interfaces of various types (visual, declarative, script-like, etc.).

The idea of so-callled 'templates' was one development that came out of this.

Also in those early days it was decided to design a whole new LaTeX programming language/system and this necessarily involves a huge amount of incredibly low-level and messy work.  This has proved to be a long process with many many iterations and refinements: this is the work that Will and others have been deeply involved in for many years now.  Thus it seems to some that the higher-level stuff has not yet been tackled.

> Insofar high-level aspects are important for program designers 

But not for designers of the machine code language (the Virtual Machine in modern speak?).
 
But rest assured that even the highest-level aspects are important to the project workers (and even to the programmers:-).

Cheers,  chris

PS: 

>> A programmer designing a typesetting system should be aware of typesetters needs.

But where these days does one find (human) typesetters to ask about there needs?  

Some type of list of these needs would indeed be very helpful to all of us (and those working on other projects) right now as they often affect the lowest levels of a language such as the LPL. 

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