At 16:43 +0100 97/10/21, David Carlisle wrote: >To answer the original question > >> Should not \@ifdefinable be changed so that it does not check >> \@ifundefined? > >No. Changing the semantics of a command used in a large proportion >of latex packages is not a very safe thing to do. > >Your analysis of the possibilities for defining/testing commands >sounds reasonable, but any implementation of such a thing should >use new names and keep clear of the old (existing) interface. Well, I figured this was a problem, too, and wanted to mainly discuss the semantics involved, not the particular naming, which is subordinate to that. But if there are other such somewhat messy internals in LaTeX needed to be straighten out, I think one should do this in the LaTeX3 project. Hans Aberg * Email: Hans Aberg <mailto:[log in to unmask]> * AMS member listing: <http://www.ams.org/cml/>