[PATCH] Always use \newcommandx instead of \def

[Richard Kimberly Heck]

On 10/17/23 14:50, Enrico Forestieri wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 17, 2023 at 08:29:12PM +0200, Enrico Forestieri wrote:
>>
>> On Tue, Oct 17, 2023 at 01:10:23PM -0400, Richard Kimberly Heck wrote:
>>>
>>> On 10/16/23 21:22, Isaac Oscar Gariano wrote:
>>>> Currently \def is used for all math macros that have no option 
>>>> arguments. This has caused me hard to debug errors because it 
>>>> silently clobbers pre-existing LaTeX commands. On the other hand, 
>>>> \newcommandx is used if there are optional arguments, and this 
>>>> gives a helpful error message if the command is already defined. 
>>>> (if you really do want to override the command, you can just put 
>>>> \let\mycommand=\undefined in your LaTeX preamble, although with 
>>>> unicode-math I often have to put this in an \AtBeginDocument).
>>>>
>>>> This very simple patch just makes LyX always output \newcommandx 
>>>> instead of \def for math macros.
>>>> Unfortunately, this means if you want to have any math macros 
>>>> you'll always need the xargs package (but it's a small package 
>>>> release all they way back in 2008 and is included in TeXlive), 
>>>> hopefully this won't annoy users too much.
>>>
>>> Since we already depend upon xargs, this won't be a problem.
>>>
>>>
>>> However, I think this might count as a format change, because it 
>>> changes the exported LaTeX. If so, then it would have to wait for 
>>> 2.5.0. But I'm not sure about this, and perhaps the people who 
>>> actually know about this will think it's safe. I'd like to hear.
>>
>> Independently from that, this is a change that needs a lot of testing 
>> and it is risky to perform near a release.

Yes, I decided not to mention that, since the format change decides it 
anyway.

It's unfortunate, but perhaps we can get 2.5.0 out sooner...

Riki