Here is a futuristic scenario: Think of a version HyTeX of TeX (as the name HyperTeX is already occupied) with the capacity of \input-ing URL's; then the ideal electronic journal only needs to contain information about journal style, and which articles to \input, the latter which of course already are posted in an official e-print archive. The distribution of each journal issue can thus become very compact. :-) Now, this idea is somewhat extreme (to us, today), but it gives an idea of how information needs to be split up between the journal style and the article style: The author needs to be able to write the article as usual, being able to generate a printout with its style elements; the journal style needs to being able to intercept and alter the style elements of its choice from the article style. If TeX was object oriented, then the various style elements would be elements of an abstract classes, first derived by the "article" class, and then derived by the "foo-journal" class (opposite of the typesetting order, with the journal class coming before the article class). The question is how to simulate this in TeX: In the typesetting, the journal class will be read before the article class, so if the journal defines a style element which it does not allow the article class to change, it must somehow communicate that to the article class. Now, exactly which style elements this concerns will vary with the journal, so the suggested scheme must be fairly general. So it appears that what is needed is a document hierarchy: \documentclass{journal} % Start of journal class \begin{document} \documentclass{article} % Start of article 1 class \begin{document} %% Article 1 stuff \end{document} % End of article 1 class \documentclass{article} % Start of article 2 class \begin{document} %% Article 2 stuff \end{document} % End of article 2 class %%... % More articles \end{document} % End of journal class LaTeX is somewhat misleading, because each document locality starts with the \documentclass statement (and not \begin{document}), and ends with \end{document} in the description I give here. Also, each locality should be viewed as a document-locality only, separated from the TeX \begingroup ... \endgroup localities. Then, what we are looking for, is a kind of \final attribute, to be attached to definitions like \def and \let. Defining \final\let\foo=\bar would mean: Suppose \foo is defined in the document locality above the one where the statement occurs, then the effect is that \foo is not redefined; otherwise, the \let takes place as usual. So attaching \final to a definition prevents it to be redefined in a document sublevel, but it allows it to be redefined on the same document level. I do not see any immediate, good way of implementing this idea, so lets hear of some suggestions. Hans Aberg * AMS member: Listing <http://www.ams.org/cml/> * Email: Hans Aberg <[log in to unmask]>