On Mon, 25 Nov 2002, Don Simons wrote:
> As many of you know, PMX has evolved continuously since I introduced it 9 or > 10 years ago. Many of the choices I had to make along the way concerning the > language and the default behavior have stood the test of time pretty well > (if I do say so myself). But I'll be the first to admit that the original > choice for the default behavior of accidental sizes was not the best. I > don't think anyone would prefer the mixture of sizes that it causes. But in > the interest of maintaining backward compatibility I've kept it, while > introducing the Ab and As options as a remedy. that's funny - i always thought that was rather clever, that the accidentals got smaller as needed to fit them in without clashes. at least, that's what i thought was happening ! > > It has occurred to me from time to time that a default-override file might > be useful. There are a few drawbacks, though. Now, the output from a given > pmx file depends *only* on the binary, and that's a very good thing. Among > other advantages, that makes problem-solving via the list a whole lot > easier. Anyone with the same binary will get the same tex file. Yes, it's > true that the dvi file will depend on pmx.tex, and by the way have you > noticed how many times over the years a stray, outdated pmx.tex has caused > problems? pmx.tex is a necessary evil, but it seems to me that maintaining > the status quo is the best course in this area, rather than introducing > another kind of local installation dependence, and one that's not really > necessary. > if you were to have such a file, I think it should be looked for in a directory pointed at by an environment variable such as 'PMXDIR', under the users control. In this way, you would not end up with over-ride files in every source directory, which would be annoying to maintain. if none, then it looks in the working directory. However, my view, like yours, is that, apart from the pmx.tex file, which is put in the install location (and so I don't view it as logically under user control), it is bad to have external dependencies. Having said that, I can imagine that people who always use the same over-rides internally with the 'A' thing might say it would be handy to always be able to have those defaults without cut and paste (but I don't think this can be made into a strong argument). If it *was* desirable, another solution apart from an over-ride file is to make them available via the command line, and the user can then make an alias to their favourite command. Of course this is Unix, I don't know if there is a Windows equivalent. % alias mypmxab 'pmxab -Asr' cheers Neil _______________________________________________ TeX-music mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://sunsite.dk/mailman/listinfo/tex-music
