> > Are you all familar with Graham Williams catalogue? in many ways, he > > no unfortunately not yet, but it looks very much as what we are you clearly didnt read your TeX Live documentation either this year or last year.... > > that would be a very useful thing to have > it is ready *is*. it has over 550 entries > may i suggest not to use "latex3" that will confuse people a lot if > they come across such an entry without the background --- and thus > also not latex1 etc. not sure what would be best. 1latex, 2latex, 3latex etc > that's fine with me although i would prefer to keep it 2a and 2b > because my view is that distributions should try to keep also 2b. but > fair enough. ok, if thats the way you interpret 3, lets go back to 2a/2b > but i would still want my "does not work with current latex class" > which would be 6 in your classification. otherwise either those ok, i take the argument. there is a class of package with doesnt work, but is a useful place to look for ideas > hmm, that does probably need some discussion of its own as i don't > think that for most stuff "best" is really a criteria. take again my > chemistry example. xymtex should be in 3 (imho) or 2b as i would > prefer but so should phchtex by Hans as both use a completely > different approach to the subject. thats a hard one. is it a common situation or an exception? i was just thinking of ways to avoid having 45 different classes implementing The Way Letters Must Be Written To German DIN Standards (gordon bennett, is there a DIN standard for email too?) > > I fear that the `nyj', `kluwer' and `elsevier' classes must > > remain in 3, as they cannot be called `must have' or `best of class', > > and so they will not end up in the main distributions..... > > and that is exactly why i'm against 2/3 but for 2a 2b as well behaving > package should preferably be in the main distribution. hang on, that doesnt agree with what i am saying, i think. my criterion for 2a/2b is that the package be widely useful. does `kluwer' fall into that category? well, possibly. could be argued about. > after all we are not talking about that much space and anyway space is > becoming cheaper and other programs tools also come these days with a > bigger set. in that case, what is the distinction between 2 and 3? > entries, eg tipa is font related but also a special application > (namely phonetic alphabet support) sure, its multiple keywords. but lets have a constrained set of keywords > > \special restrictions') > > good point, but why not call that restrictions= yes. actually, i think this is valuable info which we dont currently have > that is a good start, i would agree. still it doesn't hurt to make > provisions for the non-latex stuff as well, since if a tester test Williams already covers much else besides LaTeX this boils down largely to a plea: a) use Williams catalogue and give him feedback b) supply info to him for extra keys in the database c) encourage distributions to use the catalogue sebastian