Bug#204357: tetex-bin: latex "help" messages: when \ ommitted from \newcommand error message is not helpful
"Karl M. Hegbloom" <hegbloom@pdx.edu> schrieb:
> Package: tetex-bin
> Version: 2.0.2-4.2
> Severity: wishlist
>
> When a "\newcommand" argument does not start with the "\", the error
> messages indicate that there is a missing \begin{document}, and the
> help message (as displayed by aucTeX) says that output was produced
> prior to the \begin{document}. It does not in any way indicate that
> the "\" was missing, and should.
Yes, that would be nice. However, this is something deep in the bowels
of LaTeX. (In other words, it's clearly something to be forwarded
upstream, not even to the tetex maintainters, but to the LaTeX team).
If you take a look at source2e.dvi, "File d, ltdefns.dtx", you'll see
that this part has also been subject to change even during the lifetime
of LaTeX2e. Therefore proposing a change there would require a thorough
investigation of the problems associated with that code, knowledge of
the discussions among the LaTeX team and so on. One has to further
consider that the LaTeX team is mainly concerned about the design of
LaTeX 3 at the moment - probably the implementation of \newcommand will
change considerably anyway. I fear that this is beyond the means of the
debian tetex maintainers team.
Given all that, I do not think that it would be of any use if we, as the
maintainers[¹] of the Debian tetex-package would submit this to the
LaTeX team, not beeing able to dive deep into the discussion.
However, if you (or somebody else on the maintainers' list) is
interested enough personally to delve into the topic an bring it up on
the LATEX-L list at listserv@URZ.UNI-HEIDELBERG.DE, you could do LaTeX a
big favor. For the Debian tetex package, I would suggest to tag the bug
"wontfix".
> This is probably a very common error, since "\newenvironment" takes a
> first argument that does NOT start with a "\". That's confusing.
Well, you don't use \begin{\foo}, either, but \begin{foo}. It doesn't
seem so inconsistent to me.
Although this might not be very encouraging, still many thanks for your
interest.
Bye, Frank
[¹] I'm not a maintainer in fact.
--
Frank Küster, Biozentrum der Univ. Basel
Abt. Biophysikalische Chemie
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