Package writing questions

Question

I have some ideas about questions specific about writing LaTeX packages, like this two:

• How much e-TeX should be used / relied on in LaTeX packages?
• Possibilities to release beta/alpha versions of a package?
  (e.g. use of special package option to indicate the version)

I think these are interesting issues and having such material here would also interest the more experienced TeX people with own packages we want to attract. However, I'm not sure about how to handle them. I'm not sure that there are straight-forward answers for them. Instead there might be some discussions or several different valid things, both which should be on a Q&A site. So should I open these questions as community wikis or maybe not at all on this site?

Answer 1

We should use communiy wiki

• If we expect collaboratively edited answers, allowing easy contribution and improvements.

• If somehow subjective answers or disputes can be expected, so members can post answers without fearing rep loss because of down votes

• If you would like to allow everybody to edit and to improve your possibly complex question, answers would be CW as well then.

• When there's no straight-forward answer, but a list of options, let's use the big-list tag and possibly choose also CW as we discussed here. It's meaningful if list options should be editable by all.

Otherwise I would not make it CW however it can be done later if it's requested in comments. I tend to prefer non-CW, if edits are not expected, since contribitions deserve rep and allow more access to the site.

Even non-CW questions allow adding CW answers later, for example a summary CW answer editable by all, which is a useful approach.