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Date:         Sun, 31 Aug 2014 18:44:47 +0930
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From: Will Robertson <wspr81@GMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: Thoughts on xtemplate
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Status: R

Hi Sean,

Thanks for your comments here.
Like Frank said earlier, please don=92t take any lack of comment from me =
as disinterest =97 it=92s unfortunately a busy time for me.

On 31 Aug 2014, at 8:22 am, Sean Allred <tex@SEANALLRED.COM> wrote:

> Were you able to take a peek at the proposal document I sent out?
>=20
>    https://gist.github.com/vermiculus/d8ac080f3f8c7ec2bed6#file-idea-or=
g
>=20
> Given the limitations of purely positional arguments, I feel that I mak=
e
> a pretty good case for keyval-based arguments.  Presuming the arguments
> against positional arguments are persuasive, the language impurity
> introduced by the hybrid option doesn't sit well with me.

You may well be right on this.


> To clip a bit from the above-mentioned proposal, something like this
> seems most inline with the existing paradigm:
>=20
>    \DeclareObjectType { name }
>      {
>        first  : tokenlist ,
>        middle : tokenlist ,
>        last   : tokenlist ,
>        first  : .required ,
>        last   : .required ,
>      }

Correct me if I=92m being daft, but doesn=92t =93requiredness=94 need to =
be checked at the template not object level? I guess I=92m thinking along=
 the lines of BibTeX here =97 if an unknown key is given, just ignore it.

Consider perhaps a =93frontmatter" object that includes information about=
 affiliations, biographies, photographs, and so on. Depending what type o=
f template you choose to typeset the object, you may or may not end up us=
ing the various pieces of information.

Or perhaps both objects and templates need to have a concept of which par=
ameters are required, and only work together if they match appropriately.

Will