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} \documentclass[final]{memoir} \outputformat[colour, links]{pdf} \shorthandmacros{physics} \shorthandmacros{AMS} \authormacros{kaplan} \begin{document} \frontmatter \chapterstyle[centered]{brooks-cole} \textblock \chapterstyle[ruled]{brooks-cole} \backmatter \chapterstyle[small]{brooks-cole} \end{document} Maybe I'm a wuss---but I find umpteen dozen iterations of \usepackage confusing.... A while back there was a request on the latex3 list to have a prototypical style design template written up---anyone stepped up to try that? (I've only got two things to do and then I can try ;) William