Ok, I move the discussion back from sarovar to the ntg-pdftex list ...
on Tuesday, 14 February 2006 19:31:11 +0530,
noreply@sarovar.org
Patches item #93, was opened at 2004-07-15 10:12 You can respond by visiting: http://sarovar.org/tracker/?func=detail&atid=495&aid=93&group_id=106
Category: None Group: None Status: Closed Resolution: Fixed Priority: 5 Submitted By: Martin Schröder (oneiros) Assigned to: The Thanh Han (hanthethanh) Summary: \quitvmode
Initial Comment: The change file adds a new primitive called \quitvmode. In vertical modes, it is identical to \indent, but in horizontal and math modes it is \noindent.
See http://www.metatex.org/web/quitvmode.html
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Comment By: Hans Hagen (hagen) Date: 2006-02-14 14:01
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the original name was \dontleavehmode (kind of counterpart of \leavevmode) but taco cooked up the \quitvmode name
(in my opinion \leavevmode often does more harm than good -) [...]
The counterpart of \leavevmode is \leavehmode (aka \par/\endgraf :-) or \leavemmode (aka $/$$ :-). As I understand it up to now is that you are missing something like \leavevmode but without the side effects of this macro. But \quitvmode has also a side effects. Thus I am still missing the rationale why a new primitive was introduced. (I didn't find anything within my backlog of this list and the list archive is missing a search functionality.) Looking at the change file, why not using a macro to implement the necessary functionality?
Comment By: Bernd Raichle (bernd) Date: 2006-02-14 12:02 [...]
And why not using a macro solution? (This means that I ask to please add a small rationale when introducing new primitives.)
\def\quitvmode{% \ifvmode \indent \else \noindent \fi}
If I make this a \protected\def (using e-\TeX) this will also cover the cases where TeX is looking ahead and expanding tokens (i.e., inside alignments looking for \omit, \span etc.). Is there any unseen advantage of the new primitive not covered by this macro resp. plain's \leavevmode macro?
Regards, -bernd