[latexrefman] \normalsfcodes

[Karl Berry]

    because space factors are numbers, aren't they ?

Certainly.

    I am also wondering what the difference is between \normalsfcodes
    and \nonfrenchspacing ?

Good question.

What I see in ltfiles.dtx is the description below. So \normalsfcodes
can be either \frenchspacing or \nonfrenchspacing, depending on what is
set for the document. I believe it gets determined at the first \output
if not already set.

Perhaps the LaTeX people wrote documentation for \normalsfcodes in
usrguide, or somewhere, that could be adapted. It would take quite a
while to research the exact behavior from scratch. --best, karl.


% So that punctuation in headings is not disturbed by verbatim
% or other local changes to the space factor codes, save the document
% default here. This will be locally reset by the output routine.
% For special cases a class may want to define |\normalsfcodes|
% directly, in case that definition will be used.
% (This is an old bug, problem existed in \LaTeX2.0x and plain \TeX.)
% \changes{v1.1k}{1997/04/14}
%            {Set the document space factor defaults. latex/2404}
%    \begin{macrocode}
  \ifx\normalsfcodes\@empty
    \ifnum\sfcode`\.=\@m
      \let\normalsfcodes\frenchspacing
    \else
      \let\normalsfcodes\nonfrenchspacing
    \fi
  \fi
%    \end{macrocode}