🚀 go-pugleaf

>>>>> On 10 Dec 92 01:04:00 GMT, asnd@reg.triumf.ca (Donald Arseneau) said:
....
Donald> In fact LaTeX is not usually used this way.  Once you are writing your
Donald> own macros it is easier to NOT use LaTeX. 

It may be easier to avoid LaTeX, but doing it in LaTeX is worth the
trouble.

Donald>  Extensions to LaTeX require not just a good knowledge of TeX,
Donald>  but a clear understanding of how the rest of LaTeX is
Donald>  written, and great care to avoid conflicts. 

This is unfortunately true (and fixing this is very much in the minds
of the designers of LaTeX3) however the problems arise because latex
users *expect* more or less any two styles to work together. The have
this optimistic view because of the (relative) robustnuss of the LaTeX
system, and the fact that the standard latex commands can be used
together in most sensible contexts.

If I were to write a bunch of macros sitting on top of plain TeX,
there would be no guidelines at all for interacting with other
packages, or the `look and feel' of the user interface level. In order
to write a LaTeX style file, I may have to re-write large chunks of
latex internals, but if I manage to get the whole works to come out
with a latex look-and-feel, it is much easier for latex users to use
(given that they wont read the documentation!) and there is at least a
chance that it will work with other packages written by other authors.

LaTeX is not TeX-made-easy it is TeX-at-a-higher-level. 
Writing higher level constructs is likely to be hard, it is using them
that is supposed to be easy(er)

David (A LaTeX user :-)

--
                           David Carlisle
                                    JANET: carlisle@uk.ac.man.cs

                                    Computer Science Department
                                    Manchester University
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