"William F. Adams" <[log in to unmask]> writes:

> Did anyone ever volunteer for this?
>
> I've been working my way through some things at work and for TUGboat
> and've had some thoughts along these lines, which I've just posted to
> comp.text.tex---assuming my reasoning is decently good, and no one else
> has volunteered, I'd like to look into this once I've finished up two
> things for TUGboat.
>
> Here's the post to CTT:
>
> Here's a question I've tried to pose elsewhere and will shamelessly
> insert here:
>
> Will matters like this be addressed / ameliorated / solved by Latex3?
> (See Frank Mittelbach's post that now that the new edition of the Latex
> Companion is done he'll have time to work on Latex3 again).
>
> For my part, I'd really like to see a more granular approach to
> documentclasses and packages so that it would be easier to integrate
> different bits reliably.
>
> say something like:
>
> %\language[American]{English}
> \languages{English, Chinese, Finish, Spanish}
>
> \typespecification[headings]{Univers-condensed}
> \typespecification[captions]{Univers}
> \typespecification[text, 10]{TimesTen}
> \typespecification[math]{Euler}
> \typespecification[monospace]{Courier}
>
> \pagelayout[cropmarks, sheet-information, picas, 36 x 54,
> golden]{classics}
>
> \end{document}
[...]

> Maybe I'm a wuss---but I find umpteen dozen iterations of
> \usepackage confusing....

Are you thinking of something like Emacs autoloaded macros?  So one
would want to have things be autoloaded upon first macro use or so?

I think that something like this was optional for some versions of the
picture environment, for LaTeX2e installations short of memory space.
Should one have such a thing for a vast amount of packages without
having to name them explicitly? Catering for the standard problem of
"I tried using this code from the LaTeX Companion and it did not
work." "Have you loaded the package soandso in your preamble?"

--
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum