[texhax] choice of documentstyle upon \jobname [policy]

[Uwe Lück]

At 03:44 04.12.05, Reinhard Kotucha wrote:

>I got the following mail from Susan.  Though it is usually impolite to
>put private mails on mailing lists, I think that the question is
>interesting enough to be discussed here.
>
> >>>>> "Susan" == Susan Dittmar <S.Dittmar at eureca.de> writes:
>
>   >> \expandafter\def\csname first\endcsname{\documentclass[abc]{...}}
>   >> \expandafter\def\csname second\endcsname{\documentclass[xyz]{...}}
>
>   > Is it true that, in the case where first and second are completely
>   > composed of letters which TeX accepts for command name, that's
>   > equivalent to
>   > \def\first{\documentclass...}
>   > \def\second{\documentclass...}  ?

Nice that you consider politeness here; yet in this case rather
Susan might be encouraged to post on the list indeed.

>But the main reason I answer to this list is that I'm not sure that
>everything I say is correct.  On a mailing list I can make mistakes
>and can be sure that people correct me if necessary.

I'd like to express my strong agreement. Some recent quarrell may
have been resulted from the following somewhat competing views:

1. The list is a means for asking questions of new TeX users who
have no idea ... to the all-time gurus who know everything ...

2. The list is an opportunity for trying to get help from peers who
(maybe due to accident rather than TeXpertise) have found a way
to deal with problems of the kind that the original posting addressed.

Guess which view is mine? Further proposals come to my mind,
but sorry ...

Happy TeXing,
   Uwe.