🚀 go-pugleaf

On 3 Sep 92, eijkhout@cupid.cs.utk.edu (Victor Eijkhout) said (among other
things):

>
>The outer-ness implies that such macros cannot appear as macro
>arguments or in macro bodies,
>something that makes sense for things such as \theorem.
                ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Wrong. I write mathematical papers and am mostly content with plain TeX's
\proclaim macro. But sometimes I have to add material in front of or after
every theorem. The easiest way to do this is (or would be if not for
\outer-ness)

\def\Proclaim#1#2\par{%
<preliminary stuff>\proclaim#1. #2\par<closing stuff>}

Another possibility denied me: \def\lemma#1\par{\proclaim Lemma. #1\par}

According to the TeXbook ``...a user shouldn't be stating a theorem as part
of a definition...''
I can't think of any sentence in the Texbook more absurd than this one!
I don't want to state a theorem, just modify the definition of \proclaim
without having to rewrite the whole thing.

The stated reason (in the TeXbook) for \outer-ness is as an error catching
tool. However, the error messages generated are singularly unhelpful. Moreover
\outer macros are forbidden ``where tokens are being absorbed at high spead''.
What has the speed of absorption got to do with error trapping? I wonder what
Knuth was thinking. One of these days I will delete all instances of \outer
from plain.tex (renaming it of course) and complile a format without it.

>However, for the \newxyz macros I (and others with me) feel htat
>this decision was wrong.

I agree.

>
>Victor.
>

Dan Luecking