On Mar 9, 2011, at 11:48 AM, Philipp Stephani wrote:

> Am 09.03.2011 um 15:51 schrieb William Adams:
> 
>> On Mar 9, 2011, at 5:38 AM, Frank Mittelbach wrote:
>> 
>>> Now you can say that if somebody starts of  the document with
>>> 
>>> \usepackage{expl3,xparse,template} 
>>> 
>>> say then everything will be fine whether or not the document will be produced
>>> by ordinary 2e format or 2x.
>>> 
>>> But history will tell us that what is likely to happen is that people start
>>> writing documents that will not \RequirePackage/\usepackage
>> 
>> Would it be possible to build the format in such a way that the packages in question are built into it, but not activated unless such line(s) were present in the document?
> 
> I thought about this issue, but how should this be done on the technical level? Once you have defined a TeX macro, there is no way to "deactivate" it. I had the hope that it would be possible to require either \NeedsTeXFormat{LaTeX2x} or \usepackage{expl3...}, but I don't think there is a simple way to do this.

Okay, how about one defines all the macros using in-accessible names, then the \usepackage call \lets them to the proper, accessible names? This should still give the desired time-savings while requiring that \usepackage be called.

William

-- 
William Adams
senior graphic designer
Fry Communications
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.