Frank, > Example: > > \documentclass{minimal} > > \edef\agrave{\`a} % Doesn't work > \setbox0\hbox{\`a} % We use an accent > \edef\agrave{\`a} % Now it does work (but \agrave looks horrible! :-) ) My apologies -- there is a missing line. It should read: \documentclass{minimal} \normalsize \edef\agrave{\`a} % Doesn't work \setbox0\hbox{\`a} % We use an accent \edef\agrave{\`a} % Now it does work (but \agrave looks horrible! :-) ) since minimal, unlike other classes, doesn't use \normalsize (it just defines it). Of course, without \normalsize \cf@encoding remains empty and \OT1-cmd calls \?\`. Anyway, I didn't intend to make a point against \protect, but just to note that there was a bug in the LaTeX kernel. As far as \protect is concerned, I wonder if bad designed packages should be fixed from the LaTeX core. My main trouble with \protect is of a different nature. I think that the expansion of a protected command should be the command itself without the preceding \protect. Sometimes it is necessary to fetch the next token (that's not the LaTeX way, but sometimes is the only solution) and the \protect can be obtrusive. Of course, we may say something like: get next token if it is \protect go to beginning else do something fi but that's a bit annoying, and sometimes doesn't work because the fragile variant--that preceded by \protect--has a different name. In other words, if we make robust a command, we might make fail another command. This problem led me sometime ago to investigate an alternative to \protect, with no success. But a small (perhaps not so small) change perhaps could increase the robustness at this respect. Instead of protecting the fragile command, we could protect the command itself. I mean something similar to: \def\protected{% \ifcase\protect@status % a label depending on the context \expandafter\noexpand % case protected \or \expandafter\string % case output \or \expandafter\doitnow % case typeset \fi} \def\doitnow#1{\csname fragile\string#1\endcsname} \def\foo{\protected\foo} \@namedef{fragile\string\foo}{... the actual definition of foo ...} This is the basic idea, which must be improved. This is conceptually the current procedure implemented in a different way, which means, of course, that it doesn't make \protected@edef unnecessary. (That's just a digression on the main topic.) Regards Javier bezos