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From: wilcox@blob.cis.ohio-state.edu (Patricia P Wilcox)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: Customizing LaTeX (was Re: Backwards compatibility (was AmS-TeX 2.0))
Message-ID: <83916@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>
Date: 23 Sep 90 21:59:55 GMT
References: <33672@super.ORG> <8587@jarthur.Claremont.EDU>
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Reply-To: Patricia P Wilcox <wilcox@cis.ohio-state.edu>
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In article <8587@jarthur.Claremont.EDU> dhosek@sif.claremont.edu writes:
>In article <83895@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu>, wilcox@blob.cis.ohio-state.edu (Patricia P Wilcox) writes...
>>We just installed LaTeX (version 2.09?) from the U. of Washington Unix
>>TeX distribution and found that "\part" has been moved from the 10-point,
>>11-point, and 12-point style files to the main (e.g. article.sty) file.
>
>>Now people, this may be nice from the standpoint of neatness, but it
>>means that any customized style file someone has previously built using
>>article.sty as a basis will now fail, because \part will be missing.
>
>Not if they do things right.

Granted, Don, they weren't doing things right.  I'll bet you'll find
that 90% of all user-generated Latex extensions are not done right.  But
in *TeX*, all old documents (no matter how ugly) will still work.

>Incidentally, the change you referred to was introduced no
>earlier than March of 1988.

So?  I inherited a mess that resulted when all the TeX maintenance staff
went away and I joined up a year or so later.  It is naive for you to assume
that just because you change something in LaTeX, the whole world magically
changes at the moment you make the change.    8-)


>>If the new LaTeX will not work with all previous LaTeX applications, it
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>>should be called something else, not "LaTeX".
  ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

>All I can tell you about the new LaTeX is that the changes will
>be dramatic. I personally am looking towards SGML as the text
>formatting language for the 90s and have despaired somewhat of
>LaTeX ever being really "fixed".

SGML is *not* a text formatting language.  It requires some underlying
language (like TeX) to actually turn the SGML code into a printed document.
SGML simply specifies the logical structure of the document, not how
it should look.

>To take care of some of the more
>critical problems of LaTeX (top matter specification or page
>layout, for example) dramatic changes will need to be made that
>WILL introduce incompatibilities. There's nothing else for it.
>Trying to remain backwards compatible with style files and
>options would seriously cripple the effort. I'm having a hard
>enough time convincing Frank and Rainer to remain
>backwards-compatible with user input files.

That's fine -- I understand completely.  LaTeX is a monster.  So create
a completely new rewritten and incompatible markup language.  Then call
it FR-TeX or something.  DON'T CALL IT LATEX!!!

--Pat    (wilcox@cis.ohio-state.edu)