Hallo everybody, in May this year at the GUTenberg 2001 conference I presented a new approach to front matter handling for LaTeX using the template method. I promised there to put the macros soon onto the project web site but got sitetracked by first rewriting the template stuff to use a form of the LaTeX3 experimental programming language. Anyway, since today there are there and if you want to experiment with the stuff you can pick it up at: http://www.latex-project.org/code/experimental/xfrontm.tgz As I said template got rewritten too and the above needs the new version which can be found at http://www.latex-project.org/code/experimental/xbase.tgz I would be quite interested to hear about your experiences with it and comments on the functionality and the interface. As far as I can tell it is stable and could in fact be used to build classes even though it misses a few things still (and also doesn't do everything right with more complicated layouts. cheers frank ps below is the readme file from the xfrontm package ================================================================ % % $Id: README-xfrontm.txt,v 1.1 2001/07/24 20:40:31 latex3 Exp $ % % INTRODUCTION ============ This directory contains the first prototype implementation of the new front matter interface (xfm) for LaTeX2e*. It is not a finished product, thus it is likely that using it will result in errors or problems. Especially error recovery is more or less nil, eg, there are a lot of places which simply say \ErrorFooBar (which is undefined). So if this happens to you, you might have to search in the code to see why this is supposed to be a user error. Nevertheless, I hope that playing around with it will give you some idea about how the finished product might look like and what it will be able to do. Suggestions, comments, ... are welcome, especially on the already available functionality or on missing functionality. enjoy Frank July 2001 INSTALLATION: ============= Run latex xfrontm.ins to unpack the distribution. You also need to get the packages from the xbase distribution, eg template.sty. The older implementations of these packages _do not_ work! TESTS: ====== Run latex xfm-test and select one of the sample layouts 1-5. For layout 5 you need in theory some ps graphics with pictures of my family but if you ignore the error messages you can go on (if your internet connection is good enough you can download them; they are in the package xfm-pics.tgz). Run latex xfmgalley-test to see how the galley interface works. DOCUMENTATION: ============== As usual code documentation is in the .dtx files. xfm.dtx describes the frontmatter interface and its implementation. xfmgalley.dtx describes the galley interface which can be used on its own. (this is a cut down version of xhj and galley2 --- more stable less complex but not finished) xfm-test-cls.dtx produces a pretty printing of the sample classes (but not much docu) FOUND A BUG? ============ If you think you have found a real bug (not just something that is simply not yet implemented) I would be glad if you report it using latex latexbug from the standard LaTeX distribution and select option 7) expl3: Experimental packages for TeX programmers. (expl3) or alternatively by discussing it on LATEX-L (see below) DISCUSSION OF FEATURES (MISSING OR ELSE) ======================================== Discussion of features, either those implemented or those missing should be directed to the discussion list LATEX-L so that others can participate in the discussion. You can subscribe to this list by sending a mail with the line SUBSCRIBE LATEX-L Your Name to [log in to unmask]