Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!torsqnt!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!ucsd!ames!pasteur!piaw From: piaw@soda.Berkeley.EDU (Na Choon-Piaw) Newsgroups: comp.text Subject: Re: Cross Referencing in TeX Message-ID: Date: 18 Nov 89 09:02:19 GMT References: Sender: news@pasteur.Berkeley.EDU Distribution: comp.text Organization: cc Lines: 51 In-reply-to: spqr@ecs.soton.ac.uk's message of 16 Nov 89 14:00:43 GMT In article spqr@ecs.soton.ac.uk (Sebastian Rahtz) writes: What is the point of Lamport writing a set of macros to implement structured writing on top of TeX, and then you asking for someone to do it again? No, I'm not asking someone else to do it again, I'm going to do it myself. And if I recall right, LaTeX was never meant to be "a set of macros to implement structured writing". It was more like a Scribe clone than anything else (at least, that's the way it looks to me --- feel free to correct if I'm wrong). In any case, LaTeX's defaults are real irritating to me, and I'd rather just start from scratch and get rid of all that overhead involved in using LaTeX than to try and tweak LaTeX's output routines to my liking. The other objections I have about LaTeX is that: 1) It's too fragile for what I want to play with. 2) The only way to understand how it does what it does is to read that HUGE file that has all the code in it, and that's not something that appeals to me. 3) The LaTeX manual is not half as well written as the TeXbook. The last statement, of course, is baised. And of course, I prefer specialized macros for specialized tasks anyway. Putting the kitchen sink into a macro set is one sure way to step on your own toes when you're not careful.. thats how LaTeX does it. its the only way in TeX, so far as I can see; it MUST involve two passes, in anybody's game, and its not unreasonable to dump pass 1 onto disk, then read it in pass 2 Well, that wasn't my question.. But let it slide.. someone else answered the question for me, anyway. (Thanks everyone!) It basically involves writing to a file something like: \def\thelabel{Section number} and then \inputing it back in at the beginning of the file. (See the latest issue of the TUGBOAT (Vol. 10 No. 2) for more details in the article entitled: \string and \csname in the tutorial section.) I'm going to work out the details (as soon as I can find the time) and then hack on it for awhile. Anyone who's interested can mail me for them. Sebastian Rahtz S.Rahtz@uk.ac.soton.ecs (JANET) Na Choon Piaw piaw@cory.berkeley.edu "My opinions." % flames >/dev/null