On 18/06/2008, at 12:51 AM, Charilaos Skiadas wrote:
- .sty files are claimed by the TeX grammar (LaTeX would be better)
IIRC, sty files often don't look too good on the LaTeX syntax coloring, but perhaps I am misremembering. Do you write sty files, and in that case would you rather have LaTeX as the grammar for them?
Tricky question. Neither is particularly appropriate, since they are designed for user-level documents; there ought to be a "LaTeX code" grammar to be used for .sty, .cls, and (more importantly) .dtx files.
The most glaring example need for this I could see is that in neither the TeX nor LaTeX grammar should "@" count as a control sequence letter, but it should in a LaTeX code grammar. E.g., a control sequence like @ifnextchar should be highlighted in a .sty/.cls/.dtx file but not in a .tex or .ltx file unless between \makeatletter... \makeatother.
In other respects, a LaTeX code grammar should, roughly speaking, be a superset of the TeX and LaTeX grammars. (If the LaTeX grammar is a superset of the TeX grammar already, then the LaTeX grammar is the right choice -- sorry, I haven't compared the two in any detail yet!)
Since LaTeX package authoring is rather a niche audience, I'm not at all surprised that this issue hasn't come up before and it's certainly not essential to add all these sorts of features. Your question above just needed a longer answer than "yes" or "no" :)
Cheers, Will