[XeTeX] XeTeX 0.4 available

[Ross Moore]

On 21/04/2004, at 9:52 PM, Bruce D'Arcus wrote:

>
> On Apr 21, 2004, at 7:31 AM, Jonathan Kew wrote:
>
>> How do other people feel about command names for extensions like 
>> this? In principle, of course, any name might exist in macro 
>> packages, but using a prefix like that would obviously make clashes 
>> much less likely. But on the other hand, these are commands that 
>> users may actually type at times, and it's more pleasant to use (IMO) 
>> if such commands have "natural" names.
>
> I think minimizing potential conflicts is more important than entry 
> elegance.  Besides, shouldn't a good editor be able to help make entry 
> of commonly used commands easier?  TeXShop (not the best editor in 
> general) has autocomplete macros; right?

I agree with Bruce (and Hans) on this.

In fact, I'd go a step further, and say that there should be 2 names:
one easy to remember, the other very hard to overwrite accidentally.

In effect, we could have
   \xtxpicfile   as the hard one,
with  \let\picfile\xtxpicfile  implemented by default.

This way, a user or package-writer that wants to use  \picfile
should do an  \ifx\picfile\xtxpicfile  test at some point,
to check whether some other package may have changed its meaning.
If so, then there is a route for recovery.


Many LaTeX macro packages are written this way:
   the real work is done by a macro that *cannot* be redefined
accidentally, due to the \catcode of @ .
But this cannot be called by the user, so there is another
  *user*-macro that is  \let  to the real one, for use
in the body of a document.


Hope this helps,

	Ross


>
> Bruce
>
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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
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