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Date:         Sat, 29 Jan 2011 22:43:23 +1030
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From: Will Robertson <wspr81@GMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: a question of style
To: LATEX-L@listserv.uni-heidelberg.de
In-Reply-To:  <4D43EAE8.9020508@gmx.de>
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Status: R

On 29/01/2011, at 8:54 PM, Arno Trautmann wrote:

>> so you can then write
>> 
>>    \NewShorthand \ie {i.e.}
> 
> That is not much shorter, but it is a start …

I can't see how you could get much shorter.
The important thing is that using this command gives additional context to the commands it defines.

> What about adding something like \xspace automatically? Maybe with a
> *-version that does not?

I dislike \xspace because its abstraction is leaky. It works well almost always, but when it fails...
Ensuring you can avoid it by improving the syntax is a much better idea to me.

-- Will