On Fri, Sep 20, 2002 at 04:07:43PM +0100, John Levon wrote: > I'm waiting to see an argument in favour of validate. So far I've seen : > > 1) it is theoretically better for some reason > 2) we want to test validate code > 3) other things really do need validate > > 1) I don't understand. 2) is irrelevant if we're removing it. 3) is > irrelevant anyway, nobody is suggesting removing validate altogether.
But then 2) remains relevant. It's not just the *code* that's being tested, it's the *mechanism*. About 1), there is a sound practical reason: by removing LyX complexity, you're adding substantial LaTeX complexity. *Every document* will use the AMS code, needed or not! Mostly this will be OK and AMS is well tested code and ubiquitous -- but why take chances? We know that using packages together can be a problem in LaTeX. Not a problem now (I think), but it could become as we support more optional packages. Let's not close this door for lightweight reasons. > Arguments against : > > 1) it's not reliable > 2) it's extra code > 3) the proposed UI solutions are more complex 1) It *is* reliable for the things "dummies" do -- except perhaps for bugs that just need to get fixed then. Non-dummies are on their own anyway. 2) The marginal code added for AMS as against only validating other things is small and uncontroversial. And will become smaller still, the more optional packages we are going to support (wasn't that the idea?) (BTW you can make the AMS validation as fine-grained as you want to. There are many modalities between always including AMS and only doing so when it is absolutely, positively required. Different trade-offs between making sure it's there when you need it and not needlessly bloating your documents. There are some examples in the code for this.) 3) No. My solution (auto-validate with manual negative override) needs one button, just like yours (auto-include with manual negative override IIUC). The only real difference is that it *does* auto-validate before even looking at the button. > regards > john A pleasure flaming with you on a Friday. Martin
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