[texhax] theorem macros

[Grant WALKER]

Dear Philip and Barbara

Thank you so much for your help.   I was, as I suspected, being idiotic.   I have just been copying all this `new theorem' stuff in preambles for years without thinking, and when I switched to the MAC I didn't copy (don't know how, yet!) but tried to generate a LaTeX file from memory…
Not a good idea.   Somehow I had got the idea that `theorem' is built in as an environment and all one had to do was to ring the changes when one wanted a Proposition or a Lemma or whatever…  

I am impressed by the efficiency of the TUG group. Thank you again.  All is now sorted.

Grant Walker
On 19 Aug 2012, at 22:09, Philip TAYLOR wrote:

> Dear Barbara, copy Grant :
> 
> Barbara Beeton wrote:
>> you have to declare theorems with
>> 
>>   \newtheorem{<name of environment>}{<heading text>}[<reference number>]
>> 
>> where <name of environment> is what you will
>> use with
>> 
>>   \begin{theorem}
>>   ...
>>   \end{theorem}
> 
> As a non-mathematician, that made no sense at all to me (it would
> seem at first sight that <name of environment> is "theorem" in
> the examples you cite), so I used TeXdoc as suggested.  That
> told me :
> 
>> The \newtheorem command has two mandatory arguments; the first one is the
>> environment name that the author would like to use for this element; the second one
>> is the heading text. For example,
>> \newtheorem{lem}{Lemma}
>> means that instances in the document of
>> \begin{lem} Text text ... \end{lem}
>> will produce
>> Lemma 1. Text text …
> 
> which (to this uninformed and totally insignificant individual) made
> a great deal more sense.  So might it be clearer to express the idea
> not as :
> 
> > you have to declare theorems with
> >
> >    \newtheorem{<name of environment>}{<heading text>}[<reference number>]
> >
> > where <name of environment> is what you will
> > use with
> >
> >    \begin{theorem}
> >    ...
> >    \end{theorem}
> 
> but rather as
> 
>>> you have to declare theorems with
>>> 
>>>   \newtheorem {<name of environment>}{<heading text>}[<reference number>]
>>> 
>>> where <name of environment> is what you will use with
>>> 
>>>   \begin {<name of environment>}
>>>   ...
>>>   \end {<name of environment>}
> 
> ** Phil.