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Toward LaTeX coding standards

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Toward LaTeX coding standards
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11
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24
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CC Attribution - NoDerivatives 2.0 UK: England & Wales:
You are free to use, copy, distribute and transmit the work or content in unchanged form for any legal purpose as long as the work is attributed to the author in the manner specified by the author or licensor.
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Production PlaceTrivandrum, Kerala, India

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Because LaTeX (and ultimately TeX) is only a macro-expansion system, the language does not impose any kind of good software engineering practice, program structure or coding style whatsoever on you. As a consequence, writing beautiful code (for some definition of “beautiful”) requires a lot of self-discipline from the programmer. Maybe because in the LaTeX world, collaboration is not so widespread (most packages are single-authored), the idea of some LaTeX Coding Standards is not so pressing as with other programming languages. Some people may, and probably have, developed their own programming habits, but when it comes to the LaTeX world as a whole, the situation is close to anarchy. Over the years, the permanent flow of personal development experiences contributed to shape my own taste in terms of coding style. The issues involved are numerous and their spectrum is very large: they range from simple code layout (formatting, indentation, naming schemes etc.), mid-level concerns such as modularity and encapsulation, to very high-level concerns like package interactionslash conflict management and even some rules for proper social behavior.