General ⇒ Acronyms in Macros Worth It?

[LaTexLearner]

Is it worth it to use acronyms to save space in macros?

For example, instead of writing

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\newcommand{\mynewmacro}{\blahblahblah}

Is it worth it to instead write:

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\newcommand{\MNM}{\blahblahblah} %MNM = my new macro

Or perhaps, in the preamble, make a "glossary" of all the acronyms? Or is it better to simply write out the names of all macros with whole words?

[Stefan Kottwitz]

Technically, the length of a macro name doesn't matter.

In my opinion, the macro names should just have the right balance of being easily readable versus typing effort, for you. I prefer to type a bit more but to have better understandable names, no cryptic abbreviations.

Stefan

[LaTexLearner]

ok, got it

[Johannes_B]

Bad example: Some people define \def\be{\begin{equation}. Please never, never do stuff like that.

If you are giving the code away, for a friend to proof-read or to the copy-editor, the cursing will begin soon after, because the document is extremely hard to read. Imaging talking like that in real life.

[LaTexLearner]

Bad example: Some people define \def\be{\begin{equation}. Please never, never do stuff like that.

If you are giving the code away, for a friend to proof-read or to the copy-editor, the cursing will begin soon after, because the document is extremely hard to read. Imaging talking like that in real life.

Heh, there does not appear to me to be a purpose to making a macro that "summarizes" a single command.

Is that what makes it a bad example?

[Johannes_B]

It is just unreadable for everybody but you, it disguises the meaning of beginning an equation. If you want to save some time typing, get a decent text editor that helps you. Typing beq␣ could be expanded to \begin{equation}. Easy to type, easy to read.

On the other hand, some environments cannot be disguised that way