Re: Customizing @var?

[Robert Dodier]

On Sun, Sep 25, 2022 at 2:55 PM Raymond Toy <toy.raymond@gmail.com> wrote:

> someone wanted @var{foo}) to be <foo> instead of FOO.  It's been that way for 
> quite some time now.

I was somehow under the impression that the unnamed person was me, but
on reviewing the Git log, it looks like it was actually Vadim
Zhytnikov (commit d37e1b4, dated 2004-12-20). Let us give credit where
credit is due.

There was some discussion about @var around that time. Scanning the
mailing list messages, it's not clear to me what the deciding factor
was for Vadim Zh. who actually authored the commit; the commit log
doesn't say. But anyway one rationale that was floated was that since
Maxima is case-sensitive (that was a recent change at the time), it
didn't make sense to display stuff that might be typed at the console
in uppercase; another was that using uppercase HERE and THERE made the
documentation look OUTDATED.

I was in favor of <foo> at the time, and I still am, for the record.
By the way, Ray, which output for @var do you prefer? I'm not sure I
know.

> This works fine.  I used @definfoenclose var,<,> and @var{foo} now produces 
> <FOO> instead of <foo>.  Perhaps that's ok to whoever redefined @var.

I dunno, <FOO> with a deprecation warning seems like the worst of both
worlds -- still has an annoying message, and the output is, um,
debatable again.

All the best,

Robert Dodier