From Ottmar.Loos at fernuni-hagen.de  Tue Mar 12 14:27:38 2019
From: Ottmar.Loos at fernuni-hagen.de (Ottmar Loos)
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2019 14:27:38 +0100
Subject: [tex-eplain] bug in eplain 3.8
Message-ID: <20190312132738.3tegehsua3rmg5lx@devuan>

Dear all:

It seems that there is a bug in eplain, version 3.8:  the command

\providecommand

fails with the error message

!!! Undefined control sequence.
<recently read> \@optionalusercs

This is unfortunate as \providecommand appears in .bbl files generated by
bibtex.  As a stopgap measure, I have used 

\let \providecommand \newcommand

which is good enough for the bbl files.

Strangely enough, the bug does not occur in eplain, versions 3.4 to 3.7.

I have had a look at the differences between 3.7 and 3.8, but, not being much
of a TeX expert, could not locate the source of the error.

Any comments are highly appreciated.

Sincerely,
Ottmar Loos

From karl at freefriends.org  Tue Mar 12 23:28:01 2019
From: karl at freefriends.org (Karl Berry)
Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2019 16:28:01 -0600
Subject: [tex-eplain] bug in eplain 3.8
In-Reply-To: <20190312132738.3tegehsua3rmg5lx@devuan>
Message-ID: <201903122228.x2CMS1Ux015958@freefriends.org>

    \providecommand

    fails with the error message

    !!! Undefined control sequence.
    <recently read> \@optionalusercs

Thanks for the report. I will fix as soon as I can. -k

From karl at freefriends.org  Fri May 31 18:35:03 2019
From: karl at freefriends.org (Karl Berry)
Date: Fri, 31 May 2019 10:35:03 -0600
Subject: [tex-eplain] bug in eplain 3.8
In-Reply-To: <20190312132738.3tegehsua3rmg5lx@devuan>
Message-ID: <201905311635.x4VGZ39K009847@freefriends.org>

    \providecommand

    fails with the error message

    !!! Undefined control sequence.
    <recently read> \@optionalusercs

(I wonder how you got three ! characters there.)

I'm releasing eplain 3.9 shortly with what I hope is the fix for this. I
believe it's one line in eplain.tex (same in btxmac.tex):

-     \let\cs=\@continuenewcommand  % undefined, so we'll define it
+     \let\cs=\@btxcontinuenewcommand  % undefined, so we'll define it


On another front, for everyone: I couldn't reproduce various
double-column bug reports, although no changes have been made in this
area for a while. If double-column bugs continue to crop up (I don't
doubt they will), please report them.


Thanks,
Karl

P.S. Rodolfo, I did look at the PDF outline master/child example you
sent me, but I failed to extract a feature to add to Eplain. Sorry.
I did add the bookmark example from my email to you
(https://tug.org/pipermail/tex-eplain/2016/000911.html) to the manual.
If you think there's something more I should add to the code or doc, let
me know.

From karl at freefriends.org  Fri May 31 23:38:34 2019
From: karl at freefriends.org (Karl Berry)
Date: Fri, 31 May 2019 15:38:34 -0600
Subject: [tex-eplain] eplain-3.9 released
Message-ID: <201905312138.x4VLcYu8017087@freefriends.org>

Eplain version 3.9 is available from CTAN via https://ctan.org/pkg/eplain
and directly from https://tug.org/eplain.  It's also included in TeX
distributions.

This minor release fixes a btxmac.tex bug introduced in 3.8 which caused
\providecommand to fail. Also, the documentation now has a section
on creating PDF bookmarks (a.k.a. outlines), and url and other updates.

General: the Eplain macro package extends and expands on the definitions
in plain TeX. It's intended to provide useful definitions regardless of
how a document might be formatted, such as cross-referencing by labels.

Eplain was originally developed for the book TeX for the Impatient,
published by Addison-Wesley in 1990. That book is now freely available,
from https://ctan.org/pkg/impatient, along with several translations.
(It's also in TeX distributions.)

Please send bug reports to tex-eplain at tug.org
(mailing list web interface: https://lists.tug.org/tex-eplain).

Happy expanded TeXing,
Karl