[OS X TeX] Would you believe that?

[Ross Moore]

Hi Jérôme,

On 25/06/2004, at 11:35 PM, Jérôme Laurens wrote:

> I've just been asked by someone who is successfully using LaTeX for 
> more than ten years now.
> In fact, he was just looking for the \chapter command...
> While explaining him the \chapter syntax, I discovered that he was 
> using \begin{section} instead of \section, \begin{subsection} instead 
> of \subsection, ...

Well, that's not actually wrong --- just perhaps a little
more cumbersome than necessary.
This is because the expansion of \begin{section} ends with
a call to \section .

So long as he is using

   \begin{section}{<Title of the section>}

then all should work OK, except ...


  ... there will be an extra level of \begingroup
enclosing the material between the
  \begin{section}....\end{section},
which has the effect of scoping any \newcommand
or \def, etc.  made within this block of material.
But that's not necessarily bad either.

Was he having any noticeable difficulties ?


An *advantage* of using  \begin{section}....\end{section}
is that it gives you a hook  \endsection  at the end
of each section, where you can perform extra processing,
such as references or end-notes specific to each section
of a long document.

I could well imagine some book or journal classes
wanting you to work this way.



Cheers

	Ross


>
> -----------------------------------------------------
> Post: <mailto:MacOSX-TeX at email.esm.psu.edu>
> Please see <http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/> for list
> guidelines, information, and LaTeX/TeX resources.
>
>
>
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ross Moore                                         ross at maths.mq.edu.au
Mathematics Department                             office: E7A-419
Macquarie University                               tel: +61 +2 9850 8955
Sydney, Australia                                  fax: +61 +2 9850 8114
------------------------------------------------------------------------

-----------------------------------------------------
Post: <mailto:MacOSX-TeX at email.esm.psu.edu>
Please see <http://www.esm.psu.edu/mac-tex/> for list
guidelines, information, and LaTeX/TeX resources.