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From: jeffrey@cs.chalmers.se (Alan Jeffrey)
Newsgroups: comp.text.tex
Subject: Re: Gripe about _ and ^
Message-ID: <4379@undis.cs.chalmers.se>
Date: 27 Feb 91 19:24:08 GMT
References: <4377@undis.cs.chalmers.se>
Sender: news@cs.chalmers.se
Organization: Dept. of CS, Chalmers, Sweden
Lines: 31

Further to my comments on how ^ and _ take in their arguments, I did a
quick hack, and you can say

\catcode`\^=\active \def^#1{\sp{#1}}
\catcode`\_=\active \def_#1{\sb{#1}}

and then use ^ and _ as macros which take in their arguments in the
standard way.  The only problems I can think of with this are

a) _ normally produces \_ when activated, so some macros which rely on
this won't work

b) there may be macro files out there that explicity catcode ^ and _
to sub- and superscript, as a way of returning to what they think the
status quo is.

c) you have to do it *after* all the other .sty files have been read
in, as some of them may assume ^ and _ are sub- and superscript.

But I don't think most LaTeX documents would be affected.  Does
anyone have evidence to the contrary, before I start using it as
standard (I'm tired of having to type _{\blah} half the time), and
more importantly, it makes the source files much harder to read
(really, or at least it does for me).

Cheers,

Alan.

Alan Jeffrey         Tel: +46 31 72 10 98         jeffrey@cs.chalmers.se
Department of Computer Sciences, Chalmers University, Gothenburg, Sweden