Hans Aberg <[log in to unmask]> writes: > But another common module separator would be :, but that is already > occupied. One could change the argument spec separator to ., so that names > soul look like \foo:bar.n or something. Then TeX dimens of the form 0.1pt in the source code would not scan correctly (the "." has to have catcode 12). These issues were already hashed out at great length by the LaTeX team a long time ago. Don't forget that TeX is not like other programming languages---for example, TeX has no notion of quoted strings, so the right quote character ' could also be a candidate character for use in control sequence names, unlike C or Pascal identifiers (... the octal number notation is used so seldom in practice that a function \octal{321} would easily serve). In my opinion, there has been so far too much discussion and not enough substantial work with the published expl3 proposal. I do not say it is flawless, but I do say it is a waste of time to rehash it endlessly without any real work being done. When someone can post to CTAN a working package of nontrivial size using the current proposed conventions, then I will be ready to listen to their opinions with respect. Michael Downes