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

[Heiko Oberdiek]

On Sat, Feb 19, 2011 at 02:33:36PM +0100, Paul Isambert wrote:

> 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 uses different rules in plain.tex. Thus also \@firstofone
is covered:

\@if
\@midfalse, \@midtrue
\@ins

Or at least I couldn't find vowels to make sense instead of "@".

Yours sincerely
  Heiko Oberdiek