[texhax] "@" : vowel or glottal stop ? (was : Some puzzling TeX)

[Paul Isambert]

Le 19/02/2011 14:14, Philip Taylor (Webmaster, Ret'd) a écrit :
>
>
> Heiko Oberdiek wrote:
>> In my taste, \@firstofone is much more clear
>> than \first at fone. "@" is used for many purposes,
>> as marker for internal commands, as separator,
>> as prefix, ..., but using as vowel it's counterintuitive
>> in my opinion.
>
> Then you must have read about LaTeX before reading
> The TeXbook, so Leslie had already subversively
> indoctrinated you without your realising it :-)

Alas, Phil, one can be a plain TeX user and not agree with Don Knuth-o, 
whose offers aren't all of the "you can't refuse" type. I think @ is 
best as a punctuation mark, and spaghetti-prone as a vowel (note the 
Italian connection). And a mix with the underscore is better yet, in my 
opinion, following the pattern: \<pre>@<mac>_<sub>, where <pre> is a 
prefix unique to the package (or file), <mac> is the main macro and 
<sub> an internal sub macro. E.g.:

\def\dosomething{
     ...
     \xxx at dosomething_this
     \xxx at dosomething_that
     ...
}

Best,
Paul