On 11/05/2011, at 11:19 PM, Joseph Wright wrote:

> So looking again at this I think we should 'follow TeX', and be
> consistent in skipping spaces in all cases. I don't like the fact that
> at present there is a somewhat convoluted explanation of the behaviour
> in the xparse documentation: this tends to show up when something is not
> really correct! (At the same time, the implementation would be slightly
> easier to follow if this change was made.)
> 
> Does this seem reasonable?


I'm not sure I always agree that a slightly longer explanation means that we've taken the wrong approach.

If we are to change anything here I think we'd have to go back to the old approach of having a specifier to denote when spaces should not be skipped. Since I do think the current behaviour is desirable in at least some cases!

But then we'd be in the situation again of having an inconsistent interface. My current feeling would be [*] to leave things as they are and perhaps add a note to the documentation "feedback is requested on this user interface; at the present time we believe this is the best option [explaining this reasoning somewhere] but we acknowledge we might not be right!".

Having said all that I don't think there's one correct choice to make here, and the simplicity argument is a strong one -- so I'm somewhat on the fence.

-- Will

[*] I see I'm starting to speak like Joseph :)