> I'm so lazy that I hate to type \begin{equation} / \end{equation} to get
> numbered equations. Instead, I redefine \[ and \]:
> \renewcommand {\[} {\begin{equation}}
> \renewcommand {\]} {\end{equation}}
> Alas, this causes l2h (V98.1p1) to blurb:
I don't think that redefining such a very basic LaTeX command
as \[ is a good idea. \BE would certainly be a better choice.
Remember $$ is nowhere mentioned in the latex book, and although it
works (e.g., if you want to define locally an unnumbered equation,
it is not a requisite, meaining that latex3 could veryb well make
$$ illegal, and then having \[ to mean both a display math expression and
a numbered quation is perhaps not a good thing (in any case redefining
commands in the Lamport book is not recommended, since other packages
might rely on the original definition)
I also redefine \* to the multiplicative dot, and I'm not sure if this
doesn't confuse the regexps either:
\newcommand {\mathornot} [1] {\ifmmode #1 \else $#1$ \fi}
\renewcommand {\*} {\mathornot{\cdot}}
Again \* is used deep down in TeX's math typesetting for representing
a discretionary multiplication sign. Not a good idea to redefine such
basic commands as \*, \[, \_, \^, \(, \{, \*, \", \>, \, \. or expect
some wierd things to happen, also in latex2html, which has code for the
original meaning.
Also, in standard latex what you define as \mathornot exists as
\ensuremath, so that you could write
\renewcommand {\*} {\ensuremath{\cdot}}
These days there exist good editors to expand user abbreviations
to whathever string you desire. So, rather to make latex2html ever more
complex for making it deal with more and more exotic user requirements, a
stricter adherence to the LaTeX language but using local extensions on the
level of the editor would be a better investment of everybody's time.
Do not forget, everytime latex2html had code added something somewhere
might stop working. So as a rule I would take that renewcommands of
basic latex/tex commands should only be dealt with if they are trivial
to implement and are certainto have no side effect in any of the many tens
of packages which are distributed with the l2h system. L2H is _NOT_ TeX,
it just tries to do its best to make hyperdocuments out of latex sources.
Michel Goossens
