On Sat, Sep 18, 2010 at 09:57:04AM +0200, Frank Mittelbach wrote: > Joseph Wright writes: > > On 17/09/2010 20:36, Frank Mittelbach wrote: > > > since you already looked at the different implementations, any suggestion on > > > how to best improve the LaTeX2e behaviour? > > > > I take it that this does possibly count as a bug then, rather than as a > > 'feature'? > > it doesn't count as a bug I would say, for the simple reason that per > specification the optional argument of \usepackage doesn't support a key value > list but just a list of option names (that themselves have no spaces) > separated by comma. Only later packages appeared that internally added > something like keyval and manipulated the received option list from > \usepackage as a key/val list, but that happens after \usepackage has already > removed spaces and unfortunately in this case also the braces. > > pragmatic approach: > > you state that one needs to say ={,} to make things work as this is a fairly > seldom issue > > more elaborate approach > > change \@pass@ptions so that it only removes spaces up front, around a comma > and at the end This isn't enough, there are many other places to fix. For example, LaTeX removes used options from the global unused option list. Because of the braces \@removeelement will break, because the option is used inside the parameter text, where catcode 1 and 2 tokens are forbidden. Yours sincerely Heiko <[log in to unmask]>