Yes. Read Yossi Gil's answer: http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/13370/13435#13435. Here's an excerpt: I believe most users (maybe not so in this site) just turn a blind eye to the not so elegant features, and produce amazing documents in no time. The very friendly bunch here does not see these not-so-elegant portions as being so annoying. To most, these are just riddles to enjoy, just like cryptic crossword puzzle. .... The difficult part is in programming something new, something that cannot be found in existing package. There are experts of this dark art: the rest of us just watch them do their wizardry with awe. Luckily, the cases where you really need to do this kind of programming are very rare: chances are that you will find it was done. In my experience, this is the state of the language. If you could fix this, I believe that even those who currently enjoy the riddles would move over.