[texhax] Obsolete \centerline command used in amsbook class (Uwe L?ck)

[Barbara Beeton]

    Or use the \cs_set family of functions -- which are the same things,
    renamed -- while taking advantage of the more readable boolean
    expressions in Expl3.

    [...]

    (Also, the Plain csnames are only undefined when LaTeX3 is built as a
    format; when it's being used as the expl3 package it leaves those
    names intact.)

one begins to wonder whether it will be
possible to upgrade a production system
to latex3 without both the technical and
production staffs suffering unnecessary
nervous breakdowns.  such systems have
multiple person-years of effort invested
in producing a reliable product, allowing
reasonable flexibility for authors (even
if they don't think so) and requiring
minimal recoding by production staff, who
should in any case be concentrating on
the content, not the coding.

without backward compatibility, it seems
that we might be doomed.  (of course,
some production shops will probably just
take the opportunity to send the material
offshore for rekeying, putting us back
where we were with hot metal composition,
galleys, and all that, without, i should
note, the presence of competent editors,
who have long since been put out to
pasture.)

i'm not against progress, but feel that
"progress" implies improvement without
completely derailing the system in the
process, or at least, requires no
additional effort than the old way
after the learning curve is past while
yielding results that are not degraded.
kindly remember that degraded results
are the reason that tex exists in the
first place.

gloomily,
						-- bb