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From: herndon@sctc.com (William R. Herndon)
Newsgroups: comp.text
Subject: Why is there no seperator in TeX/LaTeX
Message-ID: <1990Aug16.214657.16764@sctc.com>
Date: 16 Aug 90 21:46:57 GMT
Distribution: comp
Organization: Secure Computing Technology Corporation
Lines: 32


    I am curious as to why, in the design of TeX/LaTeX, no character 
    exists that can be used as a seperator in the names of macros.

    After reading the TeXBook section on character codes and classes, I 
    thought that the hypen would be the character to use.  After all it
    can be used in labels ( using the \label \ref commands ), and is not
    called out as a reserved character.

    Well, I was wrong.  After defining about 500 macros, all of which had
    hyphens in them to help improve the readability of the names, I discovered
    much to my dismay that TeX obviously does accord some special meaning to
    the hyphen character and won't allow definitions with the hyphen in 
    them.  
 
    So now what am I to do.  There appearantly exists no character that can
    be used as a seperator, and I need one for clarity.  I guess that I've 
    learned my lesson and will no longer take anything that the TeXBook
    states at face value again.

    Arrrggggghhhhhhh!!!!!



								- Max

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
William R. Herndon                              
Secure Computing Technology Corp.                  The opinions expressed are 
                                                   mine, ALL MINE!  HEH, HEH, 
herndon@sctc.com				   HEH, HEH!!!
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