At 11:34 +1000 98/06/23, Richard Walker wrote:
>Hans Aberg writes:
> >   One idea one might explore is a TeX environment: It has all the old TeX
> > names defined locally within that environment, but those definitions expand
> > to the global \tex/<command name> definitions.
>
>This is akin to 2.09 compatibility mode.  With smart editors you don't
>need it.  I am happy to have a keystroke in my editor insert \tex/ for
>me (and perhaps display it in a different colour?)  If you don't want
>the clutter, you might (in a smart editor like Emacs) hide the long
>prefixes (either altogether - displaying the result in a different
>colour, or hide the prefix as `...' - as is done with outlining).

  This is a good point (which I already mentioned): It is in fact not very
difficult to insert those extensions \tex/ by hand with a good editor. But
this concerns new code.

  My idea is though different from a compatibility mode, because the idea
is that one should be able to write {say)
  \module{code}{tex}
    ... % TeX definitions
  \module{endcode}{tex}
and then the TeX definitions expand to names \tex/<command name>.

  So this TeX code can then be used as module code, used together with
other modules without code clashing. In a compatibility mode, one is stuck
with TeX for the rest of the compile. Here the idea is that after
\module{endcode}{tex}, the TeX names \hbox etc do not any longer exist; all
definitions are of the form \tex/hbox, etc.

  I am not sure if it can be done like this and work correctly, but that is
what the idea is.

  Hans Aberg
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