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Re: comments on October draft

1991-10-24 12:01:04
I suppose you can determine it by visual inspection.  Why bother though?
Why not just define the macro package and preprocessors in a parameter list?

Why insist on having information in the parameter list which can be derived,
reliably, automatically, from the body of the text?  It is definitely
possible to reliably, automatically derive the list of preprocessors; we do
it for every document we print.

The macro package, on the other hand, really does need to be specified
somehow.  What we really have here is a situation where the format of the
text is defined by program *and macro package*.  There really isn't a
"troff format", or at least not one that most people ever use; there is,
instead, a "troff -ms" format and a "troff -mm" and a "troff -me".  The
situation for plain TeX vs. LaTeX is similar.

                                         Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
                                          
henry(_at_)zoo(_dot_)toronto(_dot_)edu   utzoo!henry