Hi all,

provoced by a discussion on de.comp.text.tex, I took a first look at the
LaTeX3 experimental code, in particular the templates. Up until now I've
only read the documentation coming with the xbase package, as well as
the notes by Lars Hellstroem. So the following two questions are
probably rather superficial, but anyway:

- Why does the template name argument come after the instance name
  argument in \DeclareInstance? Wouldn't a sequence
  Template Type -> Template Name -> Instance Name
  be more logical and intuitive, the more general coming before the more
  specific?

- If the number of arguments to a template is the same for all templates
  of any given type, why does it have to be specified in the template
  declaration, where it can be inferred from the template type?

Two more things:

- In the template documentation, the question is raised whether a
  template type declaration should expect an argument containing a
  description of the semantics. I'm strongly in favour of this idea and
  would even suggest that all declarations get a mandatory argument for
  storing descriptive information, i.e. also those for templates and
  instances. (Together with another one for a one-line short description
  this would make automatic documentation of designs possible and
  besides would encourage the programmer or designer to spell out their
  ideas to themselves before coding.)

- The template documentation gives an example, caption formatting. At
  the beginning, the measure as an argument is discussed. I would
  suggest changing the semantics of that parameter to how much space is
  available, i.e. the maximum measure possible. Thus the decision about
  the measure actually used is made in the template and instance where
  it belongs IMO.

Cheers, Thomas

--
Thomas Lotze

thomas.lotze at gmx.net                      http://www.thomas-lotze.de/