[texhax] Obsolete \centerline command used in amsbook class (Uwe L?ck)

[Philip TAYLOR]

Ulrike Fischer wrote:

> Beside this amslatex doesn't "undefine" \over. The old meaning is
> stored in \@@over and you can easily restore it if you want. And even
> if it would undefine it, you could easily save the meaning yourself
> before loading the package. So what?

It is, I think, Ulrike, a clash of two different cultures and two
different sets of expectations.  There are people such as Michael
and myself, who would be perfectly happy for formats such as
<whatever, including empty>LaTeX to /add/ functionality to TeX,
so long as such packages do not remove functionality that would
exist were that format not loaded; and there are others, perhaps
such as yourself, who are perfectly happy to accept LaTeX as a
/replacement/ for the (admittedly far less sophisticated) features
of (Plain) TeX, and who do not care one iota if a TeX primitive or
TeX functionality is hidden, on the perfectly reasonable grounds that
<whatever>LaTeX provides a far more sophisticated alternative.

Now people such as Michael and I are probably members of a very small
minority, but to dismiss their very real concerns with a casual "So
what ?" is tantamount to say that their views do not matter.  If that
is your view, then you are perfectly entitled to hold it; but by the
same token, Michael and I are also entitled to hold our views, and it
would (IMHO) be far better if each group were to acknowledge the right
of the other group to hold their views without seeking to suggest that
such views are either wrong or irrelevant.

Philip Taylor