Ignoring pdftex primitives

[Michael John Downes]

Hans Hagen <pragma at wxs.nl> writes:

> > Like \font but allows spaces in font file names.
> 
> Great, the bigger the mess, the happier we are. 

If the file name is scanned as an arbitrary string---like the contents
of \csname---then it makes more sense perhaps to allow a space than to
not allow it. Spacey file names are indeed a royal pain for command
line usage and so on but are there purely internal TeX reasons for
avoiding them? It's not clear to me that there are.

> > 1-3 above would have saved me many puzzling moments and a lot of extra
> > work over the years to save users from unnecessary or unapropos error
> > messages.
> 
> Well, I admit that it can be annoying, but once wrapped in macros, those
> primitives are not that bad. I can come up with more problematic ones -)

Agreed. As far as the TeX primitives go I am only wishful thinking,
with benefit of hindsight, and so on. But for new pdfTeX primitives
surely it is better to avoid similar missteps if they are unnecessary
and a reasonable alternative syntax can be found.

> I don't like the interject. It does not ring a bell on files. 

Oh, I was assuming that it would just get wrapped in a macro and no
one would ever see it except a few TeXnicians. :-)

Michael Downes

[Hoping that I got my subscriber address fixed so this goes through as
a regular post to the pdftex list instead of bouncing ...]