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Date:         Mon, 26 Oct 2015 11:56:10 +0100
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From: Manuel Blanco <manuelbl@UCM.ES>
Subject: Re: Spaces in l3keys keys
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Status: R

I'm not sure I follow. What I was proposing is a very localized thing.
May be it's similar to proposing that in the optional argument of
figures spaces could be allowed `\begin{figure}[h t b p]` (I think
that might be the current behaviour), does that “add to the mess”?

This is again, very localized, keys in key=value pars to ignore
whitespace, I don't think that could be a problem, really. There could
be counterarguments that I can't think of, and that's why I posted
here. But I think that “adds to the mess” is not really a problem
here.

For instance, this is an usual way of inputting configuration to
{listings} package.

  \lstset{
    numbers=left,
    numberstyle=\scriptsize,
    tabsize=4,
    rulecolor=,
    language=java,
    basicstyle=\scriptsize,
    upquote=true,
    aboveskip={1.5\baselineskip},
    columns=fixed,
    showstringspaces=false
  }

what would be the risk of enabling this to also work (and all the
other whitespace combinations)

  \lstset{
    numbers=left,
    number style=\scriptsize,
    tab size=4,
    rule color=,
    language=java,
    basic style=\scriptsize,
    upquote=true,
    above skip={1.5\baselineskip},
    columns=fixed,
    show string spaces=false
  }

Personally, I think the risk (and mess) of doing this is practically
zero. It only adds flexibility.

2015-10-24 19:01 GMT+02:00 Nelson H. F. Beebe <beebe@math.utah.edu>:
> Manuel Blanco <manuelbl@UCM.ES> proposes allowing spaces in LaTeX
> l3keys variable names to be ignored.
>
> I think that this is a BAD THING; Fortran did, and still does, it, but
> almost all programming languages designed since Fortran disallow it,
> and for good reasons.
>
> TeX already has too many ambiguities such as:
>
>         \foo \bar       execute \foo then execute \bar
>         \foo \bar       execute \foo with \bar as its argument
>         \foo \bar       assign \bar to \foo
>
> Making spaces insignificant would add to the mess.
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> - Nelson H. F. Beebe                    Tel: +1 801 581 5254                  -
> - University of Utah                    FAX: +1 801 581 4148                  -
> - Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB    Internet e-mail: beebe@math.utah.edu  -
> - 155 S 1400 E RM 233                       beebe@acm.org  beebe@computer.org -
> - Salt Lake City, UT 84112-0090, USA    URL: http://www.math.utah.edu/~beebe/ -
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------