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Subject:
From:
Frank Mittelbach <[log in to unmask]>
Reply To:
Mailing list for the LaTeX3 project <[log in to unmask]>
Date:
Thu, 7 Oct 1999 11:58:23 +0200
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James,

i already started to explain my understanding of template types in the
reply to Lars and perhaps this has already answered your questions,
but anyway let me elaborate a bit more on mandatory arguments viz
keyword attributes etc

> About lists, and especially about the what it means for the arguments of
> a template type to have the same interpretation.
>
> Suppose the template type has a width argument.  This could be used for
> the width of a box to set the list in, or a template which set each item
> in a cell of a table, the width argument could be used to specify the
> width of those cells.  Is this within what is understood by type
> arguments having the same interpretation?  What if the widht was taken
> as the width of the the label?

as i said, instances with the same template type (whether or not are
derived from the same template) should be exchangeable without making
the processing of a document blow up or produce rubbish. With that in
mind the the above examples should most certainly not be the same
type. In other words the fact that an argument takes a dimension is
not the only identifying characteristic for that argument within an
informal type declaration. In addition the interpretation of this
dimension is crucial. Thus if one template would interpret that
argument as the width of the label but another one would interpret it
as the width of the whole line or the width of the text then you would
get very strange results if you replace one such instance with
another, wouldn't you?

So suppose we define the template type list with the following
characteristics (beside others not listed):

  Expects three arguments with the following semantics:
  \begin{itemize}
  \item
    String to calculate width of left indentation, or |\NoValue|
  \item
    Symbol/string to be used as item label, or |\NoValue|
  \item
    Boolean to denote whether or not numbering continues
  \end{itemize}

if so the first argument if not \NoValue would determine the left
indentation (eg something like the available space for the
label). Thus the following declaration would be an extended
description environment

\DeclareDocumentEnvironment{description}
    { o }
    { \UseInstance{list}{description} {#1} \NoValue \BooleanFalse }
    { \EndThisList }

where the user in a document could go like this

 \begin{description}[longlabel]
 \item[short] ...
 \item[longlabel] ...
 \item[other] ...
 \end{description}

in other words the user overwrites the default left indentation with a
value calculated from the string "longlabel". Now such an overwrite
possibility might make sense for vertical oriented lists (like current
LaTeX description lists) but if the designer decides that all such
lists are horizontally oriented then that argument suddenly doesn't
serve any purpose any more as there is no left indentation.

Now one could argue that those two templates are so much different
that they can't possibly form a replacement for each other (it is
perhaps a border case indeed). However I think they can and should
have the same template type and for this reason we allow one
derivation from that rule that arguments of templates with the same
type have to have the same interpretation. The exception is that an
argument value might be ignored completely (if the informal template
type description says so). That is to say all templates of a given
type have to parse the same number of arguments but in certain cases
they are allowed to disregard some of the parsed values
completely. What they are not allowed is to use the supplied value for
a different purpose.

==============================================

so when should be something a mandatory argument to a template (and
thus part of the template type) and when is it better or more correct
to put something into the keyword attributes of some template itself?

there is no simple answer for this. i tried to give some reasoning on
these template type arguments when i wrote the documentation for
template.dtx. here is another look at it.

 - clearly everything that is variable data coming from the document
 source has to be passed to the template as a mandatory argument, eg
 if we try to define a template type for say headings we have to pass
 the heading text as a mandatory argument. i don't think there is much
 discussion about that. in case of headings same would be true for
 data going to the toc and data going to a potential running head
 entry (in current latex those two are combined but this is not really
 what you necessarily want)

 - sometimes there are some logical facts about the data in the
 document that you like to pass to the template in which case this has
 to happen through mandatory arguments as well. for example
 enumeration lists might logically continue a previous list or start
 enumeration again --- this one models all kind of lists in a single
 type (which might be a mistake conceptually) then an information
 about whether or not the current list continues a previous
 enumeration should be passed to the template as a flag of some sort
 (in fact this is just variable document data if one thinks about
 this, after all it is a logical fact about the document that the
 current list continues a previous one)

 - any layout decisions should normally go into the keyword attributes
 of the individual template unless you want for some reason provide
 user level overwrites. if so you need to pass either user given
 formatting values or flags down to the template


The really difficult one is the last item, ie which (if any) of the
layout decisions of some template should be modifiable from within the
document source? A person whose soul is pure would perhaps argue
"none" :-) but life is short and people like a pragmatic approach
towards solving of problems.

So my approach is to put in the template types a number of such
"layout oriented" arguments if it seems that inclusion solves a large
number of modification requests in a wide variety of different cases
--- what a nonsense sentence :-) but i hope you get the the essence of
what i'm trying to say.

problem is to find those essential overwrites (and clearly people will
have different opinions on what is essential and what not)

for example, the above three arguments are those that i have come up
in the context of lists but there are probably others which perhaps
should get added, eg an argument which receives a value like "default"
"tight" "compact" and does modify the spacing characteristics of the
list in question.

Maybe - maybe not ... this was what i meant when i said please think
about what you would consider being an appropriate template type for
lists / footnotes / ...

so please ... :-)

===========================================================

returning to James post:

> Another thought, lists with one-line items look very widely spaced,
> especially when used with non-zero parskip and double spacing.  A
> variant form with tighter spacing, and the item text set in an hbox for
> such lists might be a good idea.

this might be something which should be controlled from the document
or alternatively one could think of a template which is internally
smarter and allows the designer to specify different spacing values
depending on the number of items in the list.

on the other hand, the current latex list setup is simply wrong in the
sense that if you change \parskip to a positive value you have to
adjust all list spacing anyway as parskip is always added to the
values (something which should not be the case) so perhaps is this not
really a problem in a properly designed setup

frank

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