Some other thoughts on automatic numbering. The automatic numbering and cross-referencing features of LaTeX are immensely helpful to the author during the process of writing. However, when a document is sent to the publisher, the numbering of its elements is fixed, and continued use of the automatic numbering mechanisms consumes system resources needlessly and can become actually dangerous during the production process: If there are any mistakes in the production, such as running a document only twice that needs to be run three times, the document might be printed with wrong numbering. I am inclined to think, therefore, that the ideal submission process should involve a step where all the automatic numbers are replaced by their explicit values from the .aux file. (In particular, what the publisher ought to be given is the set of all document numbers *except* page numbers---if not for that exception, it would just about suffice to submit the .aux file along with the document file and add \nofiles to the document preamble.) This is best done (imho) by expanding the syntax of all the automatically numbered elements to include two mandatory arguments: label and number. If the number arg is left empty, generate an automatic number; if the label arg is left empty (or if it is equal to "-" or "/" or some such convention), leave the element unnumbered (obviating the need for * form of eqnarray and the like); otherwise use the given number arg. The presence of the explicit element numbers has obvious pleasant ramifications for document navigation, for those who may still be using ordinary text editors to work on LaTeX documents instead of Scientific Workplace, LyX, emacs+AUC-TeX, or the like. It is not too extremely rare for the author to add or remove elements from a document after it is submitted to a publisher, in a way that changes element numbers. But it is after all not that frequent either (most changes don't affect numbering), and in any case recycling the document through the automatic numbering mechanisms and substituting the new numbers wouldn't be too difficult. The missing piece: a portable program to plug in the explicit numbers at the right place (or erase them) on demand. If the syntax is chosen carefully I dare say a sed script will suffice for all practical purposes, and sed is available for a lot of platforms these days. Perl, awk, and emacs-lisp versions wouldn't be too hard to supply either, to give people a choice. I haven't looked at AUC-TeX lately, for all I know it already provides in-document number updating (in the form of a comment?), does anyone know what the current situation is? Michael Downes [log in to unmask]