As "task coordinator" for commutative diagrams in the LaTeX 3 project, I would be grateful if you would turn your minds to the question of the idiom in which you think it is best to express the majority of diagrams in the main stream of category theory and other parts of algebra. The extremes are not a good test of this: (1) for diagrams which are just a square or just a triangle, it makes no difference what package you use, because you can always add \square and \triangle macros on top of it. Mike did that for LaTeX pictures, and anyone moderately competent in writing TeX macros could do it for any of the graphics packages. I don't think there's any utility in it but others may do. (2) if you are writing about the foundations of the theory of braids, by definition you are doing something which is novel, peculiar and not main-stream, and necessarily this will involve ad hoc methods of creating your graphics. The low-level ad-hoc-ery needed for this is a BURDEN to the use and development of tools for idiomatic uses. The matrix syntax has been used by several macro designers, including Kris Rose (who, as he acknowledges, took it from me) for XY-PIC, Francis Borceux, Mike Spivak (lamstex) and me. In one form or another I think this has proved to be very useful. Mike Barr refuses to say anything that might be interpreted as approval for my package, but everyone else who has actually used TeX for commutative diagrams seems to agree. In my report to the LaTeX 3 project may I say that that is the consensus of the category theory community? Paul PS The current version of my package emulates AMSTEX (not lamstex). That is, you can take your existing amstex document, add \input diagrams \diagramstyle[amstex] and it will replace the amateurish mess by some pretty diagrams. anonymous FTP theory.doc.ic.ac.uk /tex/contrib/Taylor/tex/diagram* +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++