[texhax] FW: Re: Implementing control sequences with key values

[Jim Diamond]

On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 at 11:51 (+0000), Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd) wrote:



> Paul Isambert wrote:

>>Both solutions I have adopted in some places, instead of braces. You've
>>asked earlier why using the "=" syntax, and Phil mentioned plain TeX.
>>I'll elaborate and say: you can make do without braces in many cases,
>>something LaTeX seems to want its users to forget. I for one hate them,
>>for no good reason but anyway, and I always welcome alternatives
>>(starting with TeX's syntax for assignments).

> Agreed : exactly how I feel.

Hear, hear!

I could never figure out why LaTeX is so fixated on using braces at
every possible {opportunity}.

Not that anyone asked, but I tend to write my plain TeX macros to
either have space delimited arguments or to have \par end the arg
list.

For example, my \Section macro is defined thusly:
	\def\Section #1 \par
	{
	    ....
	}

and used thusly



\Section All Graphs are Reconstructable

In this section ...


Certainly, Bad Things happen if I forget the blank line.  But I like
the blank line for reading ease, and there are so many creative ways
to botch up TeX input anyway that adding one more is really not an
issue (for me).

Cheers.
				Jim