Redefine environment to be a synonym for another

Question

I have a document with many description environments. I would like to change all these description environments to LaTeXdescription environments, without manually changing all the occurrences of description.

Is there a way to tell LaTeX that I want the description environment to be just a synonym for LaTeXdescription?

@user202729 Actually, the question you suggest was asked 6 month later. So basically this question here can't be the duplicate. — Roland, Nov 26 '22 at 03:40
@Roland while the wording of the banner suggests otherwise ("this question has been asked before") it is fine to close a question as a duplicate of a later one. The idea is to choose the best/most complete/easiest to understand question as the duplicate target, which is not necessarily the oldest. See https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/147643/should-i-vote-to-close-a-duplicate-question-even-though-its-much-newer-and-ha with the answer of Shog9 who is a (now former) Stack Exchange staff member. — Marijn, Nov 28 '22 at 09:24
@Marijn I'm probably biased, but it seems to me that both the question and the answers in this question ("the one closed as duplicate") are better from the point of view of clarity and conciseness. In fact this question has 10k views compared to 5k views of the other. — gioele, Nov 28 '22 at 13:04
@gioele either direction of closure would be ok for me in this case, I agree that this question is more concise but the other question provides useful extra information. However, my point in the previous comment was not to give my opinion on which question should be closed, just to remark that the reasoning in Roland's comment (this question is older so it can't be the one closed as duplicate) is not an existing rule or valid argument. — Marijn, Nov 28 '22 at 13:51

score 19 · Accepted Answer · edited May 21 '20 at 07:04

19

This should work:

\renewenvironment{description}{%
    \begin{LaTeXdescription}%
}{%
    \end{LaTeXdescription}%
    \ignorespacesafterend%
}

edited May 21 '20 at 07:04

Mateen Ulhaq

658

answered Nov 15 '12 at 15:18

Lionel MANSUY

6,489

2

You probably want to add \ignorespacesafterend as the last token in the end code if you define it that way as the nested environment form defeats LaTeX's white space handling. – David Carlisle Nov 15 '12 at 15:23
@DavidCarlisle Thanks, I will remember your advice. Is there a big difference between your solution and mine? – Lionel MANSUY Nov 15 '12 at 15:45
4

As always with newcommand and let the main difference is if the definition of LaTeXdescription is later changed. If it is changed then your definition will pick up the new version, mine will pick up the old. I suppose we will find out which one the OP wants by who gets the green tick. I +1 yours anyway as it is a perfectly valid answer. – David Carlisle Nov 15 '12 at 16:23
This is not the best idea: see Defining environments based on other ones: What's the right way? - TeX - LaTeX Stack Exchange – user202729 May 30 '22 at 12:05
I want to add that \ignorespacesafterend also helps pandoc to process such a latex fragment. In fact, pandoc 2.18 then deals a lot better with environments redefined in this way when they are nested in list items. – abenthy Jun 02 '22 at 07:04

score 19 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 15 '12 at 15:22

19

It depends a bit on how you define , specifically whether you define it in terms of the existing description but assuming LaTeXdescription is not defined to expand to something involving description you should be able to do

\let\description\LaTeXdescription
\let\enddescription\endLaTeXdescription

answered Nov 15 '12 at 15:22

David Carlisle

757,742

1

Note that if the environment name contain a star you may need \catcode `*=11 ... \catcode `*=12. – user202729 Sep 11 '21 at 10:49

Redefine environment to be a synonym for another

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