Re: Punctuation spacing

[Jeff Kingston]

> Specifically, I remember defining `(' [causing] trouble with `xticks'
> and similar options of address@hidden' whose body is passed directly to the
> PostScript back-end.

I did a big cleanup some years ago, whose effect is that all these
options import a particular definition, @PSLengths or something it's
called.  Anyway if any of them don't it would be easy to make sure
they do.  So it would be easy to add definitions of "(" etc. to
this symbol, which would hide your definitions within these options.

In short, if this is the main problem area then I think the file
of definitions approach will be very feasible.  The definitions in
@PSLengths or whatever will be just

    def "(" { "(" }

and so on, they will not harm any existing applications, and so
only people who choose to include your file will experience any
change of behaviour.

If you put together the file(s) of definitions that you want, I
would be willing to make sure that the other modules are modified
correctly so that they are protected from it - with the caveat that
if I strike anything unexpected and horrible I would have to back
off.

Your plan is to make a single file, with one definition for each
of these punctuation symbols, whose body will usually be a switch
on @CurrLang; some of the definitions having a parameter ("(" would
have a right parameter, ")" would have a left parameter, etc.), yes?
That should work.  Use & for concatenation within the definitions,
not |, and probably never begin or end the body of a definition
with &, and it should be fine.  e.g.

    def ")" left x
    {
        @CurrLang @Case {
          French @Yield x &1su ")"
          else @Yield x")"
        }
    }

and so on.  (whoops, should be { x &1su ")" } above).

Jeff