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References: <19748.48031.990921.327320@morse.mittelbach-online.de>
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Message-ID:  <19749.41338.25803.464875@morse.mittelbach-online.de>
Date:         Thu, 6 Jan 2011 12:03:22 +0100
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From: Frank Mittelbach <frank.mittelbach@LATEX-PROJECT.ORG>
Subject: Re: xcoffins: missing functions?
To: LATEX-L@listserv.uni-heidelberg.de
In-Reply-To:  <4D2593B7.1060506@gmx.de>
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Status: R

Arno Trautmann writes:
 > David Carlisle wrote:
 > > On 06/01/2011 09:35, Arno Trautmann wrote:
 > >> May I ask for what reason?
 > > 
 > > we were trying to think of a name for a box with handles, and once
 > > someone suggested coffin in jest it was impossible to think of a
 > > sensible name, so we had to stick with coffin. Or at least that's how I
 > > remember things...
 > 
 > Still a bit strange, but thanks for the explanation 

perhaps a bit morbit agreed. But it covers the concept quite well. Those
things have handles and you use poles to pick them up and you bury something
in it. As David said, we never found a name that is as descriptive as coffins
so in the end we decided to keep it. And by now I must confess I rather fond
of it ... after all it gives raise to some black humor as in:

 http://river-valley.tv/exhuming-coffins-from-the-last-century/

which by the way describes most of the dieas behind it (and gives some
background too). The syntax used there is not the one we finally settled for,
but if you are interested in understanding our thoughts on this, this is a
good start

frank

ps Joseph put the needed files last night on CTAN so if anybody wants to play
with the current implementation he doesn't need to pick it up from the svn any
more