Lars, David I don't mind either way and happily leave the decision to David but one question: > Compare with the case for the NFSS fontdef tokens. I understood the meaning > of e.g. \T1/pad/m/n/12 (when TeX was showling an hlist) the first time I > looked at it, but it took several months before I realised how tricky it > really was. how tricky was what? are you saying that the decision within NFSS was good or bad? I mean it disallows / as part of a name but it resulted in (given the length) quite readable names, didn't it? and in practice the use of / did not result in any practical problems (or does the above statement mean you tried to call a family something/something and then noticed that this is not working?) so perhaps using / for separation so that you get \TP@I/frontmatter/heading/section might be an option too. it would have the advantage of splitting csnames in their parts is a bit simpler. frank