James, > I don't know how verbatim environments will be implemented in latex3, > but the verbatim package requires this short hand. One posiblity that > comes to mind is that there should be a class writer's version of \begin > and end (\BeginEnvironment ?) that do not set the current environment, > and could perhaps be used with verbatim and other unusual things. i know that the current verbatim needs to be used in a special way to build other environments. but I doubt that this is a serious problem. verbatim and \verb are special in the way they circument several conventions and syntax rules within LaTeX (due to their very nature) and if they need a special interface or different handling that would not be too bad in my opinion. > BTW, how is the vertical space handling and the rest of latex2e coming > along, now that Y2K has come and gone. well contratry to common believe Y2K may has come but it is far from gone. in fact in the area I earn my living the problems are now starting to surface (quite interesting that) but yes it is now proceeding more on normal pace again and I'm about to publish what I promised. In fact the two modules now run to about 70 pages documentation (including code) so I have done something inbetween perhaps I should put out the first (the one containing the high-level paragraphing interfaces) while finishing the documentation of the second (low-level interfaces to build modules from). They need each other to actually run (ie to be used) but the code itself is not the interesting part but the interfaces (types/templates/instances) and the documentation of this is ready or mostly anyway :-) ... frank