Using a split environment inside every equation environment

Question

Is there a downside to using split inside every equation, even for single equations? One simple test I did produced identical outputs for a single line equation.

I would prefer this since it effectively means less typing and a cleaner "code".

(Less typing because I would define \be to begin both environments and \ee to end both environments.)

And I mean downsides apart from the small downside that any personal macro has, that possible collaborators will need to match conventions. I also imagine this increases the compilation time, but I think by a negligible amount.

Answer 1

It is a bad idea to hide the environment syntax, environments being the main syntactic constructs in the language. While you may be able to read it more easily, any convertors or editor syntax highlighters will most likely not be able to understand the construct, so for example not give math-specific highlighting and completion.

However it also gives worse spacing as it hides the natural width of the expression, compare the two versions:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage{amsmath}

\begin{document}

\begin{minipage}[t]{.4\textwidth}
aaaaa
\begin{equation}
  a=1
\end{equation}
xxxxx
\end{minipage}\qquad
\begin{minipage}[t]{.4\textwidth}
aaaaa
\begin{equation}
  \begin{split}a&=1\end{split}
\end{equation}
xxxxx
\end{minipage}

\end{document}